Occasionally, we at La Casa de SLOSHED! get some very stupid notions. They generally appear to be bright ideas—”Let’s make sangria!”—that morph into multi-hour odysseys about how much brandy, wine and Cointreau you can imbibe before a) realizing that brandied sangria may not have been the best choice for a party of two and/or b) falling asleep by 9pm. In my case, these events occurred simultaneously.

Most people are already acquainted with sangria, being as it is a rather ubiquitous wine-based punch served at many restaurants and functions. The initial purpose of sangria was to cover up the off flavors of tannic or otherwise unpalatable wine by mixing it with sugar and fruit juice, so it is by nature a great boon to the party host. You can use any wine you want provided that it is adequately dry and, given the number of flavors going on here, it won’t hurt anything to use that bottle of Two-Buck Chuck someone left at your house over Christmas. We used a nice, inexpensive Tempranillo-Garnacha blend and it worked out perfectly.

I pulled this recipe for sangria from Raising the Bar, my go-to party-and-punch book. This is a bit boozier than most recipes but it is meant to serve eight people, so it actually works out to be about three ounces of liquor per person per serving—fairly standard for a cocktail. I can tell you from experience that after a glass of this, a bowl of sangria sitting between two people will seem like an invitation to finish. Do not accept. RSVP in the negative. A recipe meant to serve eight should serve eight or ten or twelve, not two, lest ye enter the realm of Early Bedtime.

1 lemon, sliced
1 lime, sliced
2 oranges, sliced
½ cup sugar
8 oz fresh orange juice, chilled
8 oz Cointreau or triple sec, chilled
8 oz brandy, chilled
750mL bottle dry red wine, chilled

Add sliced lemon, lime and orange to a pitcher or bowl large enough to hold all the liquid. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and muddle until the sugar dissolves. Pour orange juice, triple sec, brandy and wine over the fruit and stir. Serve immediately or chill until ready to serve. Strain out the macerated fruit before serving and garnish each wine glass with a fresh slice of citrus.

Having given you my fair warning about imbibing this in proper quantity, I have only one quarrel with this recipe: the sugar! Half a cup muddled in the fruit makes this punch exceptionally sweet, especially if you are not serving it over ice (which I do not because it’s sangria, not a spritzer). Given the addition of so much orange juice, Cointreau and brandy, the single lemon and lime are not enough to combat the forces of sweetness. Even a dry red wine has a healthy amount of sugar, so I’m going to cut back to a quarter or even and eighth of a cup of sugar next time. You don’t want to do away with it completely, since the sugar does the work of extracting the lemon and lime juices for you, but a little goes a very long way here.

Like this? We also suggest:

• Blood Orange Margarita — blood orange, cocktail, Cointreau, halloween, lime, tequila
• Bum’s Rush — apple, Bärenjäger, cocktail, Cointreau, honey, lime, tequila, tiki
• Sherry Cocktail — brandy, cherry, cocktail, grenadine, lemon, orange, sherry
• Corpse Reviver #2 — absinthe, cocktail, Cointreau, dr cocktail, gin, halloween, lemon, Lillet
• Cunningham — cherry, cocktail, dionysos, lemon, orange, scotch

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