Sangria you say?

Ah, our annual summer party has come and gone; hard to believe 'cause the entire weekend flew by so fast!

One thing I made for the party this year was a white sangria. I'd been throwing around a few ideas as to what to make as my beverage of choice; 2 years ago I made "slush", which is popular in Wisco but seemed to scare people here. Not that they didn't like it, simply that no one really tried it. Last year I went with a Southern Comfort punch, which I enjoyed but didn't feel like repeating [Southern is almost too syrup-y for this girl]. Hmmmm, sangria sounds good, right? So I started to hunt around for recipes on Friday [nothing like waiting 'til the last minute to decide on something!] and decided a nice, refreshing white sangria was in order. Turned out great, something I could drink a lot of. And I did.

White Sangria
Adapted from allrecipes.com

1 bottle dry white wine [I chose a relatively inexpensive chardonnay since I was making so much of it]
3/4 c. mango-flavored vodka [Absolut is the only brand I could find that made this flavor]
6 Tbsp. lemonade concentrate, thawed
1/4 c. white sugar
Fresh fruit of your choice

Mix all ingredients together in a pitcher, making sure to shake or stir enough to dissolve the sugar, and chill for several hours or overnight. I actually tripled the recipe, twice. And almost all of it was gone by the next morning.

I will tell you this: I made sure to cut this recipe with club soda, although it tasted great as is. My concern was heavily intoxicated guests early on in the game, and even after it was cut it still delivered a good buzz. I added club soda to the pitchers as they went down onto the deck, although you could just set out bottles of soda and let your guests decide if and by how much they want to cut it.

I'm sure I'll be making this many times in the future. For this recipe, I used pineapple, blueberries and peaches as my fruits, but I think mango, strawberries and apples would have been great too. Enjoy!