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SANGAREE (American.)
Put a quarter of a pint of Madeira or port into a large tumbler. Add two or three lumps of sugar and as much hot or cold water as will fill the glass. Grate nutmeg over the preparation, and serve.
A single-glass drink of the old tavern school, closer to a wine toddy than to Spanish sangria. Everything hangs on the wine being good enough to drink on its own.
- A quarter of a pintIn imperial measure that is 5 fl oz, one gill — a generous pour, roughly two modern servings of fortified wine. Scaled to a 12 oz tumbler it would leave about 7 oz for water and ice.
- Lumps of sugarVictorian loaf sugar was cut into lumps of varying size, broadly comparable to a modern cube, perhaps 4 g or a rounded teaspoon each. Two or three gives roughly 2–3 teaspoons, which reads sweet now; start with one and taste, particularly with a tawny port that is already sweet.
- The wineThe recipe does not specify a style; a sweeter Madeira of the bual or malmsey sort suits the drink, though a drier sercial or verdelho would serve — not a cooking Madeira with salt added. Port is best ruby or tawny rather than vintage — the nutmeg and sugar will bury anything subtle.
- Hot or coldHot water makes a winter negus-style drink; use water just off the boil rather than boiling hard, so the aromatics are not driven off. Cold makes a long summer drink, and is where ice belongs.
- Dissolve firstPut the sugar in with a splash of hot water and stir it out before the rest goes in. Undissolved lumps sit at the bottom of a cold sangaree for the length of the glass.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the surface at the moment of serving — the aroma is the point, and pre-ground nutmeg has lost it. A rasp of zest is not in the original but sits well with the port version.
- YieldOne tall glass, and a strong one: 5 fl oz of fortified wine is about one and a half US standard drinks (roughly 2.5 UK units) before any dilution.
Sangaree is generally traced to the Spanish sangría, though the route is not certain — a passage through French sangris has also been proposed — and the word reached British and American drinkers through the West Indies in the eighteenth century, where fortified wine, sugar, water and grated nutmeg were the standing ingredients of the punch bowl. It appears in tavern lists and bar manuals: Jerry Thomas's Bar-Tender's Guide of 1862 gives several versions, made with port, sherry, ale and porter, all finished with nutmeg. Cassell's labelling it "American" reflects the late-Victorian British habit of treating mixed drinks generally as an American speciality, though the drink itself was well known on both sides of the Atlantic. The nutmeg is the signature, and a reminder of how far a grater and a single imported spice could carry a cheap glass of wine.