Meandering, as you may know, is thirsty work! So we’re always in the market for a refreshing beverage. Here are four Spanish drinks we’ve been enjoying.
Sangria
Possibly the most famous of Spanish drinks, this beverage is easy to love. At its base, it is red wine with brandy or vermouth plus fruit (apples and oranges) and sparkling water. And what is more fun than sticking your fingers/fork/tongue into your wineglass and fishing out the alcohol-soaked fruit at the end? (Note: we are told by genuine Spaniards that fruit is to be consumed at the end, so we’re trying to learn to be patient.)
Sherry and Vermouth
Spain is home to a number of fortified wines, great in both quantity and quality. This is an area of expertise we don’t have, so we’re trying desperately to catch up. Sure, we’ve drunk our share of sherry before college dinners at Oxford. We have also mixed our share plus your share of Manhattans with vermouth in them. But we still have a lot to learn about the topic. Sherries in order, from dry to sweet, are fino/manzanilla, amontillado, oloroso, and Pedro Ximénez. The first two are quite dry, the last very very sweet. All very good, and great with different kinds of food.
Vermouth we know even less about, but we are working really hard to catch up. The Spanish varieties fall in between Italian and French in terms of dryness, and are most often drunk by themselves. Vermut is traditionally a drink of the north, but it’s readily available in the south of Spain as well. And Spaniards tend to drink red rather than white, but most places stock both. It’s usually but not always served in a rocks glass over ice.
Orange Juice
We know you know what orange juice is. But here it’s freshly squeezed, and it comes with breakfast pretty much anywhere you order it out. Just about every café-bar will have an orange juice squeezer right next to its row of hams.
Hot Chocolate and Friends
The coffee is great in Spain, but the hot chocolate is genuinely spectacular! Especially if you like sweet and thick. Generally speaking, your spoon will stand up in this stuff. Extra points if you dip churros in it, which meal will give you your recommended daily allowance of fat and sugar in one go. On the other hand, the coffee can also be pretty sweet, especially if you get something called a bonbon, which contains condensed milk and – in the one we tried – Nutella. Plus coffee, not that you’d notice it with everything else going on.
And More!
We haven’t even bothered to focus on the wines, which are spectacular. We especially like the rosé, but they’re all winners. Not to mention the cost: look carefully at this picture (prices in Euro) and you will see what we mean. Obviously, boxed wine isn’t going to be the very best stuff available, but we bought one of these and it wasn’t bad. There’s also cava, Spanish sparkling wine, which we have drunk and loved for years.
And we’ve been exploring the world of orange wines: there’s a super-sweet one, pictured below, that is eminently quaffable. Plus the beer: Seville’s own Cruzcampo is a very popular lager, which is perfect with fried food.
So there are our favourite Spanish drinks, but the list just keeps growing!
