Cafe Iberico SangriaWhat You Are Really Drinking

Blagica Stefanovski, NBC5 Street Team (Video)

Knowledge is truly a wonderful thing. Over the last few years, we’ve become more educated when it comes to what’s in our food, where the ingredients come from and what those ingredients really do to our bodies.

As my mother ordered some sangria from a local restaurant in metro-Detroit, I started thinking more about sangria. What a great drink. A mix of wine and fruit and not too strong for folks that don’t like plain wine. My mind then wondered to the recipe for Cafe Iberico’s famous sangria. I know some folks that used to work there and they shared the recipe for Iberico’s sangria (as of last fall). In the spirit of knowledge and consumer awareness, I thought I’d share it with you, Chicago.

Cafe Iberico Sangria
-Boxed, inexpensive California wine
-Orange juice, from frozen concentrate
-Orange soda from the bar gun (which contains a high dose of high fructose corn syrup)

To boot, take a look. The sangria is stored in those large garbage cans your parents put on the curb. Of course, the tub is lined with something to hold the sangria. Storing the drink in large quantities isn’t abnormal, however, I wasn’t a fan of the fruit flies flying around the vat.

Now, things may have changed since my last visit in Octoberish of 2006, but I thought I’d share. Everyone has their own version of making Sangria and Iberico didn’t deter too much from the basic how-to, but boxed wine and orange soda from the bar? Could they at least use Trader Joe’s “Two Buck Chuck” and some other type of sweetener like honey?

So many of us care more about what we drink and digest. We might as well add that mantra to our evening drinks, too. Ladies, put your WeightWatchers Point counting or carb diets on hold when you drink that sangria, too.

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