Watermelon Sangria

Outside of my obsession with playing with spices, I love wine and playing with wine. I used actually be noted for my spontaneous cocktails. People loved them as much more than the food that I cooked. I have a theory on this, it is what I call the cheap wine theory, basically after a couple of glasses folks do not really complain about the edge or lack of smoothness of cheap wine. Nonetheless, I have significantly reduced dabbling with cocktails, not because I have reduced my drinking but it is sort of in line with my general hasstle free approach to cooking. Doing a creative syrup, cooling it, takes time. However, a couple of weeks back, I made this Watermelon Sangria, inspired by this recipe.

Now, what a difference the wine makes, while Doug's sangria looks like the pale red of the watermelon, my version looks much deeper and yes, you got it right I used red wine. Actually, I skipped the agave nectar, because I used a slightly sweet red wine.

This red is very happy served chilled and hence, just perfect for Sangria. I had to through in the black salt, it is a quintissential Indian combination to add black salt to fruit juices.

So I made about 4 glasses of sangria following the following measures,

Watermelon Sangria

Cook/Prep Time: 1 hour (mostly chilling)

1.5 cups of fresh watermelon juice (about 1/2 a medium sized water melon, cut and pureed in the blender and then strained.

1.5 cups of a sweet red wine

1/2 teaspoon black salt

1.5 cups of seltzer

Method of Preparation

1. Mix in the watermelon juice, red wine and black salt.

2. Chill for at least 45 minutes to an hour.

3. Place 2-3 ice cubes in serving glasses (you do not want too much or it will dilute the watermelon flavor).

4. Add in 3/4 glass of the wine-watermelon mixture.

5. Top off with some seltzer and enjoy.