Sangria

Would you name your wine

after an old medical procedure?

As AWS members, we understand that naming and marketing a wine are important steps to that wine becoming a success. I’m an amateur winemaker and I’ve named my wines after some strange things. I usually name them for one or more of my dogs, but sometimes I use family or other ideas. I have never used a medical procedure. Our next tasting will be a Sangria “Sip ‘n Share”, so we thought that a little history was in order.

One of the stories about how Sangria was named claims that it was derived from derramamiento de sangre, which is Spanish for the medical procedure known as bloodletting. To treat diseases blood was drawn from a patient and allowed to flow into a bowl of water. It’s been said that Sangria wine resembles the appearance of that blood and water mixture.

There’s another story. An 18th century Castilian dictionary claimed the British invented a red wine infused with fruits and sweeteners that they drank during hot summers in their American colonies. In the same century, a drink of red wine, lemon, sugar and fizzy water called Claret Cup was popular in the U.K.

Adding things to wine is an ancient practice. The Romans brought the concept to what is now Spain more than 2,000 years ago.

Maybe it is or maybe it isn't the birthplace of Sangria, but Spain certainly has been the wine's home for quite some time. For many generations, and for an obvious reason, the wine used for Sangria was red. Now we also have white Sangria (perhaps someone along the way reasoned that since we have white blood cells ...)

The EU has had the last word regarding what can be called Sangria. The wine is identified as a mixture of wine, citrus fruits or extracts, possible spices, a sweetener, possible spirits, carbon dioxide, and it must be under 12% alcohol by volume. Each EU member country producing Sangria must label the product “produced in - followed by the name of that country”. Iberian Peninsula producers are exempt from the rule. If there’s no country of origin on the label, then that Sangria was produced either in Portugal or in Spain.

Under labeling rules in the United States, Sangria is considered a formula wine, classified as “grape wine, usually red wine, with citrus flavors or juices.” The formula must be documented and supplied to federal regulators.

According to which story you believe, in 1951 Lorenzo Granados introduced Sangria to the “Beat Generation” in New York City in his Greenwich Village restaurant.

Or, it was introduced to the U.S. at the 1964 World’s Fair. Whenever it was introduced, New York Baby Boomers tasted their first Sangria as they came to drinking age, which was eighteen in the 1960s. The popular wine then was Yago Sangria, which is still available at your local Fine Wine and Good Spirits store (LCB # 7934 - $13.99 for the 3-liter bottle). There was even a fashion craze in the '60s for Sangria-style dresses.

We’ve come a long way, Baby Boomers. Bloomfield hipsters now enjoy sangria produced in their Iberian home as well as across a variety of nations, including the U.S. At the end of August 2018, Nielsen listed almost 250 Sangria wines sold in the U.S. In that month alone, $17 Million worth of Sangria was sold retail. In the 1960s, pre-packaged Sangria was primarily in glass bottles. Today, Sangria comes in many packages, from glass to boxes to cans to kegs.

Classically, Sangria has been a summer drink, so we hope that you’ll join us for our official summer “unofficial” tasting. We are going to have a Sangria Sip ‘n Share. Details to follow soon, so keep checking the website.