The festive season is approaching, have you already started thinking about the menu? How about surprising your guests with a colourful and tasty drink like Christmas Sangria? A wintery, Christmas version of the famous drink made of fruit and spiced wine.

The Christmas version of sangria is very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries and is usually offered in two versions, red, more faithful to the original, or white. The most commonly used spices are cinnamon, vanilla, star anise and sprigs of rosemary (aesthetically reminiscent of fir trees) to decorate. We dedicated a post to sangria some time ago; if you wish, you could also make a Christmas version of the original recipe, which you can find here. Providing you with just one recipe seemed reductive, so we thought we would point you to the collection of 18 winter versions of sangria, published in delish.com, an online magazine dedicated to cooking.

As we said at the beginning, Christmas sangria can also be prepared in a ‘white version’, with white wine and rum; in this case, rather than cinnamon and star anise, we are going to use a vanilla pod.We decided to experiment with it using the recipe proposed by the Carlo Rossi winery.

So as not to exclude the younger ones and any guests who do not want or cannot consume alcohol, you can prepare an equally pleasant non-alcoholic version. We particularly liked Monsieur Cocktail's Unicorn Syrup-based version. Unicorn Syrup is not easy to find in Italy, it has a very summery and sweet taste with notes reminiscent of candyfloss. You can try substituting it with a red fruit syrup.