Happy Holidays from the Backyard Bartender.

Here's a warm and bright little sangria, perfect for sipping with the family this Christmas. The cranberry is a tart and tasty complement to the wine, a little bit of spice adds holiday cheer, and a cup of Lillet makes everything just a little more deliciously grown-up.

Cranberry Spice White Wine Sangria
serves 8
1 bottle (750 mL) dry white wine (such as Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc)
1 cup fresh cranberries
1 orange, sliced and cut into quarter-wheels
15 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
1 cup Lillet Blanc
1 cup white cranberry juice
1 cup red cranberry juice (I used cranberry juice cocktail, since real cranberry juice is very tart and a bit hard to locate.)

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and allow to steep overnight. Serve over ice.


Thanks for reading, friends. I appreciate you all, and hope you have a wonderful, safe holiday filled with good friends, good times, and good drinks.

Kool-Aid Cocktails, aka CRUNK JUICE.

At my old job (the one where I used to be an architect), my co-worker Nubia would tease me about making recipes for crunk juice. I had to ask her what that meant. I am not crunk. According to urbandictionary, crunk juice is a combination of Hennesy and Red Bull, preferably drunk from a pimp cup. In Nubia's experience, "crunk juice" refers to a highly alcoholic punch found at backyard parties, usually made with Kool-Aid. I like her version better, because honestly, Red Bull and cognac? Sounds pretty nasty.

I had kind of forgotten about the crunk juice when Kaye, my sister's sister-in-law (or my brother-in-law's sister, however you would have it), emailed me wanting suggestions for drinks to make with Kool-Aid. The words "crunk juice" were never mentioned, but still, my mission was clear. The people had spoken, and they wanted Kool-Aid cocktails.

First, I decided to do a little research (thanks, google!), just to see what was out there. Turns out the current Kool-Aid cocktail landscape is a barren wasteland of foul, sugary concoctions with names like "demon's blood" and "the purple panty dropper". With this in mind, I established some guidelines for my Kool-Aid cocktails. They had to:

A. have Kool-Aid in them (obviously),

B. be easy to make,

and C. bear at least a passing resemblance, taste and composition-wise, to real cocktails. This means I wanted them to actually taste like alcohol. The point of mixing drinks, at least in my mind, is not to doctor up booze with sugar and fruit juice so you can't taste it anymore - making cocktails is all about combining flavors, including the flavor of the spirit, into something new and different and hopefully delicious. Here's what I came up with:

The Tropical Storm

Inspired by that quintessential New Orleans cocktail, the Hurricane.

2 oz Tropical Punch Kool-Aid syrup

.75 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1.5 oz dark rum

To make the Kool-Aid syrup: Prepare a package of (unsweetened) Kool-Aid according to the directions, but add half as much water as the package calls for. (That is, one quart.)

To make a whole pitcher* of Tropical Storms (c'mon, you know you want to):

1 package Tropical Punch Kool-Aid

1 cup sugar

1 quart water

1.5 cups fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 bottle (750 ml) dark rum

*Word to the wise: make sure your pitcher is big enough before you start adding stuff. This version will make about 16 servings, so also make sure you have lots of friends.

It tastes a lot like Kool-Aid...but with a little twist. Might actually be closer to the original version than whatever it is they're serving up on Bourbon Street these days. (I've made hurricanes according to the original recipe, and I've sipped some at Pat O'Brien's, and they are not the same. At all.)

and then there's...

Instant Kool-Aid Sangria

Let's face it, sangria is one of the greatest things ever. Wine? Good. Fruit? Good. Wine + fruit? EVEN BETTER. I've made sangria with pretty much everything else...why not Kool-Aid? After all, not everyone has time to cut up all that fruit. Everyone has time for this.

2 bottles red wine (try an inexpensive merlot or cabernet)
1/2 cup sugar
1 packet unsweetened lemon-lime Kool-Aid
1 packet unsweetened orange Kool-Aid

Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher. Serve over ice.

It's good. Not as good as real sangria...but still pretty good. And super easy to make. And did I mention super cheap? Bonus: throw some actual fruit into the pitcher, and see if your friends are fooled. Try substituting other flavors, too. I'm curious about lemonade + black cherry. (Updated to add: when using other flavors, you may need to add a little more sugar.)

And finally...

The Kool Blue Gin-Gin MuleOf all the bizarre and off-the-wall ingredients I've sourced for my drinks, one of the hardest to find was - you're not gonna believe this - berry blue Kool-Aid. I went to three different grocery stores before I found this stuff. I thought it had been discontinued. But then there it was, like the holy grail of Kool-Aid, beckoning from the shelves of the very last store I tried.

2 oz Berry Blue Kool-Aid syrup (prepare according to directions above)

1.5 oz gin

.75 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice

1.5 oz ginger ale (or ginger beer, for a stronger ginger flavor.)

And the pitcher drink version:

1 packet unsweetened berry blue Kool-Aid

1 cup sugar

1 quart water

1 bottle (750 ml) gin

1.5 cups lime juice
3 cups ginger ale

Once more, berries + gin = win. It's highbrow meets lowbrow...meets delicious.

Oh yeah.

Winter White Sangria

A few weeks ago, Houston was in the sway of something resembling Winter - the temperature dropped below forty for almost two weeks, the sun did not come out, and a couple of days it even FROZE and everyone in our lovely city lost their collective shit. Of course I'm also a total wimp when it comes to cold weather, because hello, I live in Houston, so I stayed at home and drank hot tea and took long hot baths and dreamed of summer and sangria.


During which time I thought, hey, I don't think I've ever made a sangria with cucumber. It seemed like an interesting challenge - the savoriness of cucumber in a sangria. I though about the Mr. Stair, the pretty green pear sour that I had to puree a cucumber to make. With that as my inspiration, it wasn't long until...

The Winter White Sangria
A white sangria recipe with pear, cucumber, blood orange, and St. Germain elderflower liqueur.

1 bottle dry white wine (pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc)
1/2 cup eau-de-vie poire william (pear brandy)
1/2 cup St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1 pear, cored and sliced
8 cucumber slices
1/2 blood orange, cut into half-rounds

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and chill overnight (or for at least 8 hours). (Most sangrias get better as you continue to infuse them, but you actually don't want to steep this one much longer than 8 hours or the cucumber will become too pronounced.) Serve in a glass over ice.

Verdict: I did done good. Beautiful and crisp and fresh, with a lingering sweetness. Just the thing to tide you over until spring.

The Happy Birthday Page St. Germain Elderflower Sangria

In the world of mixology, St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur is Kind of a Big Deal. In the 2009 edition of the book of cocktail recipes that Food & Wine magazine publishes every year, there are 10 different cocktails featuring St. Germain. (For comparison, there were only 9 with vodka.) So St. Germain is new now and super trendy, and, like many people who were nerds in high school, I have a certain suspicion of anything incredibly popular. So it was with a bit of reluctlance that I bought my first bottle.


My mind began to change when I first held the bottle in my hand. I know, it's a bottle of liquor, not a baby, but seriously - this bottle is gorgeous. Just it being on the counter was enough to give my kitchen a certain air of sophistication. And the taste - is beyond incredible. Fruity and floral, sweet without being too heavy. Other bloggers have attempted to break it down into its component parts, but I just thought - "I bet this is what ambrosia tastes like". (I just looked up ambrosia on Wikipedia, to make certain it was what I thought it was, and the article described it as "a kind of divine exhalation of the earth". St. Germain elderflower liqueur is a divine exhalation of the earth.)

It has a pretty cool story, too - the flowers used to make the liqueur are handpicked, in the foothills of the Alps, during only a few days every spring, by only 40 or 50 different guys, and then transported to the distillery by bicycle. By bicycle. Each bottle has a little label with the vintage year and its own individual number, which should make you feel a little better about paying as much for it as you did.

In other news, Page had a birthday (on July 3rd, which tells you how behind I am with these posts), and Jessie had a party for her, part of which was a talent show. Well, my talents are...singing Total Eclipse of the Heart at the top of my lungs, and making cat noises. So I made sangria. Of course it had to be something original, since Page is an original, and I had that lovely bottle of St. Germain sitting on the counter, beckoning to me. And it was right there on the box, all helpful-like, how great St. Germain is with white wine. And St-Germain is light and fruity and sweet, just like the wines Page likes (I've drunk a lot of wine with Page), so really it was a no-brainer.

People keep asking me how I knew which fruits to add to the sangria, and the answer is: I am a culinary genius. No, the answer is, I looked at a few other blog posts about St. Germain, and people were saying things like "hints of peach!" "hints of pear!" "hints of citrus!", so I started there. The one thing I didn't see was "hints of elderflower!" because apparently nobody else knows what an elderflower is supposed to taste like, either.

St. Germain White Sangria
1 bottle dry white wine*
1 cup Gt. Germain
3/4 cup pear nectar
1/4 cup poire william eau-de-vie (pear-flavored brandy), if you have it**
2 peaches, pitted and sliced***

1 pear, cored and sliced****
1 cup red grapefruit, cut into wedges
1 cup green grapes, cut in half

2 tablespoons simple syrup

*Sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio are good choices for a white sangria. I used Messina Hof's pinot grigio. Yay Texas!

**If not, go ahead and add a full cup of pear nectar.

***I used white peaches, for a more subtle peach flavor, but yellow will work, too.

****Pears aren't very good at infusing, hence the eau-de-vie and the pear nectar. The sliced pear is really more for looks (and post-sangria snacking).

Mix it all up (make sure your pitcher is big enough before you start adding the ingredients!), cover the pitcher, and allow to steep in the fridge overnight (or for at least eight hours).

Verdict: Peach and pear and all sorts of flavors meld together seamlessly into something indescribably sweet and light. Pretty much the perfect summer drink.

Texas Summer Sangria

I am obsessed with this book. Seriously. Since buying it I have become such a sangria fiend that I now think of sangria as a season. In much the same way that some people welcome the coming of fall because it means the beginning of football season, I welcome spring because it means that I can make sangria again.

Hello, lover.

I've made almost every sangria recipe in the book, so it was sort of inevitable that eventually I would create my own. I wanted to do a flavor combo that I hadn't tried before, and I wanted to use fruits that are in season in Houston right now - a little taste of Texas summer in every sip. Here's what I came up with:

1 750 mL bottle red wine*
1.5 cups blackberries**
3 peaches, pitted and sliced**
1/2 cup simple syrup
1/4 cup cognac***

*I used a Messina Hof shiraz, in keeping with the whole Texas thing, but really any red wine will do as long as it's not too sweet. Good bets are shiraz/syrah, cabernet, or merlot. One of the great things about sangria is that you don't need to use expensive wine - I've made sangria with four-dollar wine and loved it.
**See the last post for info about where to get farm-fresh fruit in Houston.
***It's okay to use cheap cognac, too.

Put the berries and simple syrup in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for about five minutes. The goal here is to release some of the berry flavor, so you'll know it's ready when the berries start to lighten in color just slightly and the syrup starts to thicken. Take off the heat and set aside. Pour the bottle of wine into a pitcher (I always end up tasting a little at this point because hey, wine is delcious), and add the cognac, peaches, and syrup/berry mixtures. Cover and refrigerate overnight (or for at least 8 hours) - this will let the flavors marry. (And don't flavors deserve happiness just like anyone else?)

The Verdict:
I took my first sip of my first pitcher of my first sangria, fully prepared to have to add some OJ or peach liqueur or something to get that perfect balance. I was blown away. It was like heaven in a glass. (I know I say all my drinks are good - because I wouldn't post them if they weren't - but seriously, this will blow your mind.) Sweet burst of peach, hearty red wine, nice berry finish. I took it to a party and it was a huge hit and disappeared almost immediately. I was very flattered, but also a little disappointed - because I sort of wanted to drink the whole thing myself.

Easy to make. Hard to share.