Stu’s Special Sangria
Ingredients:
1 bottle of red or white wine
2 oz of gin
2 oz of peach schnapps
Orange juice to taste
All your favourite fruits, to taste, and chopped
1 can of ginger ale
1) Combine wine, gin, schnapps, and orange juice in a large pitcher.
2) Chop up fruit (if necessary) and add to the pitcher.
3) Let the mixture sit overnight in a refrigerator to allow all the flavours to blend.
4) Just before serving add ginger ale to the mixture.
Countless things come to mind when I think of my friend Stuart Vetter. I remember the time he fashioned himself a Batman costume for Halloween out of a little kids’ onesie he found at Loblaws.
I remember the time I hardly had to convince him to come see a drag performance with me at Ollie’s one eventful night.
I remember the time he taught me how to properly stitch up a rip in my sweater and how to sew on a button while we lived in residence. I remember his excitement for travelling and his passion for trying new things.
I remember the time he trekked around town to make sure each girl in his circle of friends got a flower on Valentine’s Day.
But most of all, I’ll forever remember Stuart’s love for exquisitely concocted alcoholic beverages.
Stuart raved about his ‘special sangria’ over the course of our first semester of university—a recipe he claimed to have both devised and perfected over the years.
Don’t get me wrong, Stu loves his beer and wine. He’s the master for recommending something you’d like based on what you’re already drinking, and more often than not, is spot on. But there’s something about tending bar—particularly making cocktails—that just gets him going.
Finally, in late February, we dedicated the time to make his sangria. Let me clarify. Stuart found the time to make his sangria, since we weren’t allowed to help.
Not that he didn’t want our help. He was happy to let me push the cart around the grocery store as he piled it sky-high with fruit like a kid in a candy store. Every time I turned around Stuart was in a different aisle picking up pears, or kiwis, or mangoes and smelling them to make sure they were ripe.
I’m positive onlookers thought he had a fruit-fetish. I may have thought so too, a little.
To paraphrase his thoughts on the matter, sangria-making is a meticulous procedure that requires flawless precision, and only Stu held the recipe to its perfection.
Once we (Stu) picked out all the vital ingredients, we trudged back to residence. I was excited to finally help, getting to at least cut the fruit so that he could place it into the pitcher. But, apparently you can cut fruit wrong too, because Stu banished me from the makeshift kitchen (aka residence desk) and I was given the duty of ‘overseer’, which, admittedly, wasn’t terrible.
We let the Gypsy Kings serenade us while Stuart slaved over his sangria and I tried to stitch a button back onto my sweater, until finally, some three hours later, the process was complete. Well, nearly complete, anyways. The gin, schnapps, juice, fruit, and wine were mixed together and the only thing left to do was wait—which was surprisingly the most difficult part.
The next night, our group of friends gathered into the Gypsy Den (aka one of the pods on floor nine of Glengarry house) and waited for Stu to arrive, bearing his creation. The man looked like a proud papa parading his newborn infant as he came through the door with the pitchers.
Stu poured us each a glass, and then waited apprehensively for us to take the first sip. I couldn’t be more serious or sincere. That was the best sangria I had ever tasted and still have tasted to date. It was so good that we ended up using chopsticks to eat the fruit from the bottom of our glasses, which were saturated with booze by this point. Needless to say, the sangria did its job, and Stu did it right.
I’ve attempted to make Stu’s sangria a handful of times since last February. Though sometimes I’m too impatient to let it sit refrigerated overnight, I swear it makes all the difference. I can’t guarantee it’ll ever taste as good without Stu’s authentic craftsmanship, but if you can get it to be even a portion as delicious, then you’re doing Stu proud.
—@gooliaallen
