When making sparkling sangria, you can cut out the usual step of adding club soda or ginger ale that’s near the end of most sangria recipes. When you make sangria with champagne, cava or prosecco, the bubbles are already there. But you don’t want to lose them before the sangria is ready to serve. That’s why, for sparkling sangria, you don’t add the wine until the very end. So you have to plan to let the fruit flavors muddle without it.

Since I wouldn’t be adding any soda water at the end of this recipe, I knew the sangria wouldn’t lose any potency by adding some fruit juice on the front end. So I set out for my ingredients with that in mind. And as I typically do, I hit the stores with just some basic ideas in mind, rather than a rigid recipe, to see what looked fresh.

Sparkling Sangria Ingredients

Choosing which fruits would meld well with a sparkling wine seemed easy. Mimosas have taught us that champagne and orange juice are a match made in Heaven. So I checked out the assortment of citrus, which is frankly fabulous this time of year. I found some gorgeous little mandarin oranges at my local Trader Joe’s. What could be more perfect than tiny sliced oranges for pouring into a slender champagne flute? And the strawberries have been phenomenal lately, so I tossed a batch of those in my cart as well.

Now, I knew that I did NOT want to use orange juice. I wanted to be careful to not make a sparkling sangria that ended up being so close to a mimosa that it practically was a mimosa. And I had in mind to use a ginger-flavored liqueur, so I wanted something that would balance well with that. I might not have gone looking for tangerine lemonade, but when I saw it, I decided to give it a go.

All I needed now was the sparkling wine. While champagne seems like an obvious choice, I kind of wanted to go with a cava. In the U.S., we frequently refer to all sparkling wines as champagne, but we’re getting better about recognizing that delicious sparkling wines don’t all come from France. Cava is a sparkling wine from Spain, and since sangria also has its roots there, I wanted to be true to them. I chose Freixenet because it’s a familiar brand that most of us can find at our local grocery stores.

Making Sparkling Sangria

Now again, when making sparkling sangria, the wine would go in last. But I still wanted the fruit to soak for a bit. I thinly sliced about 10 mandarin oranges. I hulled and quartered 10 large strawberries. I put them all in a pitcher and then added 1/2 a cup of Domaine de Canton French ginger liqueur, plus 1 1/2 cups of Tropicana tangerine lemonade. I gave it a gentle stir, and into the fridge it went. I let it sit for three hours (though I’ll admit, I took a few peaks to stir it a little more and inhale the aroma).

After three hours, it was ready to go. I ceremoniously uncorked the Freixenet and poured the entire bottle into the pitcher and immediately poured glasses for my husband and me. I added sprigs of rosemary for garnish, though we both agreed that a fresh shave of ginger would be pretty amazing to top these off with, too. Maybe next time … and there definitely will be a next time!

I hope this recipe inspires you to try your hand at making sparkling sangria, too. Cheers!

Sparkling Sangria With Mandarin Oranges and Strawberries

Make this sparkling sangria with mandarin oranges, strawberries, ginger liqueur and the sparkling wine of your choice – champagne, cava or prosecco will do.

Author: Anne Shelton

Ingredients

10 fresh mandarin oranges
10 large strawberries
1/2 cup ginger-flavored liqueur
1 1/2 cups tangerine lemonade
1 (750 ml) bottle of sparking wine
Sprig of rosemary for garnish

Instructions

Rinse and prepare fruit. Thinly slice mandarin oranges. Hull and quarter strawberries.
Put fruit in pitcher. Add ginger liqueur and tangerine lemonade.
Gently stir. Refrigerate for 3 hours (or longer, if you’d like, up to 24 hours).
Pour in sparkling wine just before serving.
Garnish with fresh herbs or ginger.

Notes

We used Freixenet brand cava, but any sparkling wine would work in this recipe. And the ginger liqueur we used is Domaine de Canton.

Keywords: sparkling sangria, sangria recipe, sparkling wine, champagne, cava, prosecco