Add Carbonation To Your Sangria For An Even More Refreshing Cocktail

Chilled and bursting with fruit flavors, sangria is easily one of the tastiest ways to imbibe, and an instant crowd-pleaser — wine enthusiasts love the fruity twist, and even those who don't normally drink wine appreciate the easy-sipping blend of sweetness and tartness. The combination is fairly straightforward: red wine, brandy or liqueur, and fruit. But professional and home bartenders alike have riffed on this concoction over time, resulting in all kinds of creative treats. Ways to upgrade your sangria range from using white wine to switching up your spirits to incorporating more savory elements. One of the best options especially for hot weather? Make your sangria sparkle.

For one thing, introducing carbonation to sangria is like turning the volume dial on its flavors up to 11. The crisp zing of bubbles amplifies jammy wines, fruit-pie brandies, acidic citrus, sweet berries, and more. For another, and importantly especially for al fresco summer parties, it's incredibly refreshing. You can choose to add effervescence via non-alcoholic or alcoholic mix-ins, but whether it's sparkling water or sparkling wine, you'll have a sangria with a drier finish, a crisper bite to its sweetness, and a more thirst-quenching quality. 

The most effortless approach is making a sangria spritzer — for every four ounces of wine, aim for six ounces of sparkling water. But there are plenty more options from there, including flavored seltzers and alcoholic alternatives.

Building on the sangria spritzer, you could experiment with different flavors for different sangria recipes. For a classic red wine sangria, seltzers in flavors like strawberry, raspberry, or cherry would complement the drink's sweetness, or you could temper that sweetness with lemon or lime. You could really play up the peach in this charred peach rosé sangria with peach-flavored seltzer. 

If you want to add bubbles without diluting the alcohol content of your sangria, think similarly on coordinating flavors within sparkling wines. For example, you could swap in sparkling rosé for that charred peach rosé sangria, and adding Lambrusco to red wine sangria would give you carbonation while only further bolstering that fuller bodied red wine character. A sparkling white wine like prosecco or cava would be right at home in a white sangria, made with still white wine and often different fruits like peaches and even mangoes. Either sparkling rosé or sparkling white wine would bring bubbles, a touch of refreshing acidity and minerality, fruitiness, and botanicals to berry tea sangria with white wine.

When it comes to proportions for boozy bubbles, it often comes down to preference. Some recipes call for topping your finished sangria with sparkling wine to taste, whether that's in an individual glass or punch bowl, while others recommend pairing two cups of carbonated water with a 750 milliliter bottle of red. Others still take out the still wine all together, meaning a batch requires two bottles of sparkling.