Sangria, A Refreshing Drink Of Spain & Portugal

Sangria is a Spanish and Portuguese drink of wine (originally red wine) with fruit or fruit peel, as well as sugar, added. There are variations of ingredients, including the addition of brandy or rum, or sometimes also cachaça in Portugal.* Since the wine will be flavored with other ingredients, I suggest you choose a wine of  modest price, and if you want authenticity, use a Spanish "rioja," but a cabernet sauvignon or a merlot, both easily available, would be just fine. You certainly can vary the amount of sugar to your own taste  

Ingredients:

1 bottle red wine
1 lemon, sliced
1/2 orange, seeded, chopped with rind
1/2 peach, peeled, pitted and chopped
6 to 8 seedless red grapes, halved 
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
4 tablespoons sugar
ice
(optional) Triple Sec or Cointreau (these are orange flavored liqueurs)*

In a pitcher, add all ingredients, except the wine and ice. Mix everything together well, and you needn't be gentle in your stirring of the fruit, as extracting a bit of juice and softening the fruit so that it emits more juice into the wine will only make for a better sangria. Cover the pitcher and let it sit for about 30 minutes. Add the wine and the ice and stir well. For those who like it with more alcohol, when serving, you can add a small amount of Triple Sec or Cointreau to each glass, then pour in the Sangria and stir. If everyone prefers more alcohol, you can just stir a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of Triple Sec or Cointreau right into the sangria. 

* Cachaça is a rum-like alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane in Brazil. Brazil was once a colony of Portugal. Cachaça is the main ingredient in Brazil's well known "caipirinha cocktail." 

** Cointreau is from France and is 40% alcohol (80 proof) and Triple Sec was originally produced in France, but it is now produced by distilleries outside of France, including in the United States. The alcohol content varies, but it is usually between 30% and 40%, depending upon brand. 

WORD HISTORY:
Peach-The ultimate origin of this word is uncertain, and no one theory has exactly convinced me. It goes back to transliterated Ancient Greek "mêlon persikón," which meant, "Persian apple." The peach tree was brought to Persia from China, thus giving the Greeks the association of the tree and fruit with Persia. This was borrowed by Latin as "malum persicum," which later became just, "persica," which then became "pessica," meaning "peach," or "peach tree." This then became "pesca" in Latin, and passed into French, a Latin-based language, as "pesche." English borrowed the word as "peche," in the early 1400s, although there may have been some use of the word even about a century earlier.