How To Serve Iced Sangria To Maximize The Flavor

Sangria is a refreshing alcoholic beverage choice — and with a base of either red or white wine, there are a variety of ways to make it. Typically, you choose ingredients like a mix of fruit or fruit juice, sparkling water, flavored liqueurs, and sweeteners. But the possibilities are nearly endless, depending on your specific tastes and preferences.

Once you've decided on a recipe, however, there's one key part of the sangria experience that needs to be sorted out: ice. As it turns out, there's a specific way to use ice to maximize the sangria flavor. Here's what you do: Fill each glass to the top with ice, as there won't be any ice in the pitcher of sangria. With ice in each glass, the sangria, whether refreshing red sangria or peach jalapeño sangria, will stay nice and cold — and refreshing — for the most amount of time.

You may be wondering if the ice will dilute the sangria, and the answer is yes. But that can actually be a good thing when it comes to sangria.

Sangria isn't exactly a mild drink, seeing as it typically has both wine and liqueur, both of which have fairly high alcohol contents (the average alcohol content for wine is between 11% and 13% while the average for liqueur is between 15% and 30%). So if you don't want as strong of a drink, ice will be a huge benefit to you as it will dilute the drink to make it a little bit easier to drink. Also, if you like the sangria taste but want it less sweet, the dilution will help to provide a more subtle taste that isn't as overpowering as sangria would be sans ice.

However, if you'd prefer the strong sangria taste, there are ways to keep your sangria cold without the dilution of ice. You could either utilize frozen fruit pieces or use ice cube trays to freeze fruit juice into convenient "ice cubes." Or, if you'd really like to maximize the sangria flavor, you can freeze ready-made sangria into ice cubes and add that to your glass of sangria.