Fucking Badass Sangria

Ingredients
1 standard size bottle of Merlot
Sweet and sour mix
Sugar
1 Mango
Lemons
Limes
1 Orange
Cherries (in a jar)
Can of crushed pineapple
Sprite

Sangria. It means bloody in Spanish. It's also incredibly fucking tasty. Every year I have a "cocktail of summer" (last year it was the mojito) and, while sangria isn't really a cocktail, it's the selection for this year. It's my fucking tradition, so I do what I want.
Sangria is pretty simple, actually: red wine (or white wine if you're making sangria blanco), fresh fruit, something to add a bit of sweetness, and either brandy or soda. So long as you stick with this simple formula, you can really do whatever you want. Want to use kiwis, grapefruit, and tangerines? Go for it. Honey to sweeten? Shine on you crazy fucking diamond. It's so simple that it must have been invented by drunk people. Like, legitimately drunk people. Just sitting around the hacienda one day, completely shit housed, and someone says, "Dude, let's take all the wine... mix it with all the fruit... some other shit from the cabinet... then, like, fuckin' let it sit there for a while." Drunk brilliance is really the best kind of brilliance.

Why not Just Buy a Bottle of Sangria?
Because fuck you, that's why. Also, homemade sangria tastes ten times better than sangria from a bottle. Not to say I haven't bought a bottle or two in my time, but when I can make it from scratch, I do. Here's my recipe.

Pineapple 7Fuck-You-Up Cocktail

Ingredients
Orange Juice
Fresh pineapple
7Up
Ice
Gin
Highball glass

As I mentioned in the recipe for Caribbean-style pulled pork, I invented a cocktail while waiting for the pork to cook, using only ingredients in that recipe with the addition of some gin. My good friend Chelsie, the author of Three Ring Mom, coined the name.
This is sort of a take on an old gin cocktail called an orange blossom, with a nice little pineappley, drunk guy surprise at the end.

Mojito Part 1: The Classic

What You Need
Powdered sugar
Carbonated water (soda, seltzer, sparkling... just don't use tonic)
Fresh limes
Fresh mint
Light/White rum (decent quality, Bacardi or higher)
Ice
Highball glass
Jigger
Shaker



Summer is slowly approaching and it's time to start thinking about my summer cocktail for 2011. This has been a personal tradition of mine for about five years... each summer I seem to pick one cocktail and stick with it all season long. Last year was the summer of the mint julip, a southern classic. This year, the mojito has her Cuban claws deeply embedded.
As far as I'm concerned, the mojito is a perfect cocktail: not too sweet or heavy with a great flavor and plenty of zest (from both the rum and the lime). Plus, Ernest fucking Hemmingway drank them, and the only thing that man liked more than drinking was killing shit with huge guns. He is truly a man to be emulated.
This is part one of a two part series, focusing on the classic Cuban mojito. Part two will be a my more personal twist on the drink... but it's important to know where you come from, so here's the classic.

The Black Queen

What you need:
Royal Crown Cola
Vanilla flavoring syrup
Canadian whiskey (Black Velvet is preferred, for taste and cost)
Ice
Highball glass (or suitable tallish glass)
Jigger (if you don't all ready have this, kill yourself)

Back in my college days, my drink of choice was Black Velvet Canadian whisky and Vanilla Coke. I like to think I learned more from this fucking drink than I did a good portion of my professors (especially Concepts of Fitness. Seriously, fuck that class). Unfortunately, those fucksticks over at Coke no longer make Vanilla Coke in the preferred two liter bottle. You can only get it in cans, and since I've cut out soda drinking (except for adult beverages), it's a big fucking waste of money for me. I also recently started holding a poker night at my house on Fridays, and it required a signature drink. Thus, the Black Queen was born. Here's how to make it.