The Blount Rule of Sangria

The Devil’s Drink

Friends, as we celebrate the Birthday Month of Patty Blount across the world, with parades, television specials, and an attempt in Paraguay to set a world record for Largest Chocolate Sculpture Ever Created, it’s naturally a good time for me to write about my second-favorite subject, alcohol. Because it is always a good time to write about alcohol.

Much like how Patty tests her physical limits when it comes to chocolate, constantly experimenting to see how much chocolate is too much chocolate (results so far are inconclusive), I once tested my own limits when it came to alcohol in all its forms, before settling into my middle-aged dotage awash in whiskey. These experiments included the following episodes, which to this day cause full-body shivers of horror among my friends and acquaintances:

The Martini Massacree: I once through a Martini-themed party because Martinis seemed so sophisticated and urbane despite tasting like cemetery dirt. I downloaded a bunch of recipes and laid in supplies, and then despite waking up with the Stomach Flu of the Damned, decided not to cancel, despite the fact that the smell of alcohol more or less made me puke immediately. I spent much of the party reclining in my bed doing breathing exercises, and the Martini recipes turned out to be speculative at best.

The Bubblegum Shot from Hell New Years: Persevering in my quest to understand all forms of alcohol, I volunteered to be bartender for a New Yeat’s Eve party, and prepared several shot recipes, one of which was a Bubblegum Shot. This was the worst thing anyone had ever prepared for consumption, in all of human history, and the party ended early with just about every sitting, stunned, all their joie de vivre sucked away.

My thirst for alcoholic knowledge was cooled somewhat by these misadventures, which took a toll on my health as well as my sanity. Then I discovered whiskey and it was my own personal burning bush, something that provided all the answers, and for a while held off on the experimentation. Until the first time I had Sangria, which kicked off the question: Is Sangria just fruit juice they pretend has wine in it?

The Sangria Question

Growing up in the Tri-State Area, my only prior experience with Sangria was as part of TV commercials for Beefsteak Charlie’s, which always promised all the “beer, wine, or sangria” you could drink, which always sounded kind of enticing. What was sangria? I had no idea. When I sat down to dinner with friends one day in my mid-20s, and we were offered sangria, I insisted we order it solely because I had those old commercials in my head: I was going to party like it was 1982.

The Sangria was fine. Delicious, even, a sweet fruity concoction in a glass decanter, bits of fruit floating about. And when we’d consumed it all, we felt … nothing. Not even the slightest buzz. I’d gotten drunker from a single beer, or from standing up too quickly on a hot day. And the question loomed: Was there actually wine in Sangria? Or was it justa  fruit-filled con? So we did the only thing we could do, as men and women of science: We kept ordering more. We figured if there was any alcohol in there, we’d feel it eventually, right?

We were so wrong. To this day I firmly believe you can drink Sangria all day long, then get behind the controls of a huge skyscraper crane and have no trouble whatsoever. No amount of evidence otherwise will ever convince me that Sangria isn’t just fruit juice, and that’s probably why Beefsteak Charlie’s gave it away for free. Sangria is the devil’s drink. That’s why I prefer whiskey–I like my alcohol to burn on the way down and force you to do some deep knee bends after each sip, because at least you know what you’re getting.

Hapy birthday, Patty!