It's Noon Somewhere-White Strawberry Sangria

It is almost summer even if the weather doesn't want to play nice.  But even though it doesn't feel like summer, this time of year, I get in the mood for summer foods...and drinks!

The view from my window today.  Gross!

One of the best summer drinks has to be sangria.  I love the sweet and fresh taste of homemade sangria and it is a great way to drink cheap wine and stretch your cocktail budget.  I have always made red sangria but decided give white sangria a try.  So last weekend (and yesterday!) I decided to whip up some white sangria with strawberries and lemon.  I would say this is my new favorite and almost the best sangria I have ever had (the best was at Tapas 24, a modern tapas restaurant, in Barcelona where they give you a sangria slurpee!).

All you need is:

• 1 bottle of dry white wine (It is absolutely appropriate to use an inexpensive wine. Since you are diluting the wine you wouldn't want to use an expensive one.  I used a dry white wine from Chile.).  You do want to use a dry instead of a sweet wine because there are other sweet elements and you want a dry wine to counteract that sweetness.
• 1 apple, cored and sliced
• 1 cup of hulled and sliced strawberries
• 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup of white rum
• Lemon lime soda (I used diet 7up).  You just need enough to top off each glass, I actually didn't measure how much I used.

Mix all the ingredients except the soda together into a large pitcher and put them in the fridge to cool and for all the flavors to marry.  You want to keep it chilled for at least four or five hours before you serve it. 

Summer in a glass!

Once it is chilled, serve it with ice and topped off with some lemon lime soda.  The amount of soda you put in depends on how much you want to stretch the sangria.  When I made it the first time we topped up each glass individually and I think we got about 2.5 glasses each.  When I made it again yesterday, I used a larger pitcher and just poured the soda over it before serving and we each got three glasses.

This is a great and easy summer cocktail.  It would be tasty with all kinds of food and I really love it as an alternative to cocktails at a summer party.  It is economical, tasty and super pretty.

Here's to summer!  Salud!

Julie