Rosé Sangria

We got snowed in last weekend and RAN OUT OF RED WINE.

What a predicament. All the comfort food eating and board game playing that heavy snow fall invites just feel so unceremonious without a glass of wine.

But! Fortunately I had a couple of bottles of rosé left over from this past summer, AKA the summer I got very into exploring what is possibly the prettiest and most fun of all wines: rosé.

And can we take a quick minute to just talk about rosé because it had been uncharted wine territory for me prior to last summer. I’m hooked. It is so refreshing and fun to say and the color of it alone makes me want to drink it! 

Between having a baby and moving 700-some miles, I found perusing the wine aisle at my grocery store in search of the perfectly pale pink rosé to be a rather relaxing activity. I would hold bottles up to the light and act like I knew what I was doing.  

I don’t know that relying on color alone is the best way to pick out a rosé. In fact I would venture to say that this is not a good way to pick out a rosé. What I do know is that I ended up with a few bottles that were - even for a novice rosé consumer who has next to no palate - undrinkable. 

And as a waste-not-want-not type of gal, I couldn’t let those bottles go unfinished. 

So they’ve been sitting, collecting dust on our wine rack, for months. Me refusing to cut my losses and throw them out, but also never having been desperate enough to resort to drinking them.

Thanks to a snow storm and a lack of foresight in the red wine purchasing department, I found myself staring up at our rejected bottles of rosé, wondering if their time had come.

If there’s any way to turn a bad wine into a delicious beverage, it’s adding liquor and fruit and sugar and juice to it, right? So, I made sangria with it. It felt like a long shot, and how could it possibly compare to my beloved red wine sangria?

BUT WOW. Rosé sangria does not disappoint!

It has the familiar hints of orange and brandy that I love in a traditional sangria, but is lighter and more refreshing. And, like all sangria, it’s drinkable. Maybe even a little too drinkable.

I also love the lighter color because whatever fruit you put in it isn’t automatically dyed a deep plum by red wine. It’s all so vibrant and fun!

This rosé sangria is a drink for all seasons! It’s delicious in the winter with cranberry and apple and pear, and would definitely make an easy holiday party drink! But I would also be sipping this on a hot summer day with lots of fresh berries in it.

Basically, this is a drink for all seasons and all occasions and all people who like fun, boozy drinks.

Oh, this is also great for people looking to up their fruit consumption. Sangria-soaked fruit is definitely one of my favorite ways to eat it. I highly recommend!

Don’t feel like you need to spend a lot of money on the smoothest rosé to make this. If you're asking me, I would suggest getting bottom shelf wine OR using a bottle you’ve had laying around.  

And any orange liquor will do! I used Cointreau because it’s all we have and this whole sangria saga was prompted by being snowed in in the first place, so we definitely weren’t going anywhere to get triple sec. But! There’s no need to use the expensive stuff. Cointreau is a margarita game-changer, but so much else is going on in sangria that it’s really not needed. I would use triple sec in the future. (Assuming I remember to get some!)

I am patting myself on the back a little bit for making such a terrible rosé selection, because it worked out so, so perfectly for this sangria.

Do you have foods/drinks you HAVE to have when you're snowed in? Tell me in the comments below!

Adapted from Bobby Flay.