W hen Bobby and I were in Miami, we went on a few date nights to this Spanish restaurant called Montaditos. It’s a franchise, actually, so there’s a chance you’ve heard of it. Every Wednesday, they had this phenomenal deal where you could get all their little tapas sandwiches for just a dollar each. Plus, you could get a mug of sangria on the cheap. That sangria was so good!

Everywhere you turned in the restaurant, people were enjoying the sangria. I kept on raving about it days after our first Montaditos experience. Here was my line of thinking during that time: “Of course their sangria is going to be tasty – they are a Spanish restaurant! They probably have a super secret recipe that makes it addicting and delicious…They likely loose money on it every Wednesday because so many fine ingredients go into it…If only I could make that tasty drink myself…We must go again next Wednesday.”

WELL. Imagine my surprise when we were standing at the counter on one of the following Wednesdays and Bobby laughed, saying “Wait, did you just see how they make the sangria?” I had been distracted so I had not. He proceeded to reveal the secret to this delicious concoction. I shall show you in picture form:

Boxed wine and orange soda. That was it. At the restaurant, I believe they were pouring from a liter of Orange Crush – Bobby and I have opted for Orange Dry, which is basically like Orangina. It only contains 10% real fruit juice but it’s nice to at least pretend like we took the sophistication to the next level.

You may now start to make (probably accurate) assumptions about my wine palette. This is not the blog of a fancy wine connoisseur. I don’t even like red wine. But, apparently, when it’s from a box and mixed with cheap orange soda, I am ALL ABOUT IT.

Here is an illustrated version (you know, just to look classy next to all of those other fancy pants recipes on Pinterest). I’m telling you, don’t knock it ’til you try it.

For the purposes of this blog post, I WAY classed this up – the extra fruit, the orange rind, the obligatory paper straw. I think that’s a cardinal rule of blogging: every drink post must involve a cute paper straw.

Honestly, though, this is the way that Bobby and I enjoy our sangria most nights:

Wine, orange dry, and a couple ice cubes. Just as tasty, WAY less work. (I’m not sure why it stayed layered like that until we mixed it up – maybe because the orange dry was cold and the wine was room temp? Any chemists out there?)

May your summer days and nights be deliciously festive!