My Top 5 Wine Cocktails

Water it down, heat it up, or just mix it with soda and ice. Once you set aside the snobbery, wine—with or without alcohol—makes a fantastic base for cocktails.

Bubbly Berry Sangaree. Photo by Farrah Skeiky.

A friend of mine used to do something that drove sommeliers crazy: she’d add ice to her wine. You could almost see their hackles raise every time she did it. Maybe it was because they wanted her to enjoy the wine unadulterated, or maybe there was a touch of snobbery involved. Likely, a bit of both.

But it never bothered me, even when I counted myself among the ranks of wine professionals. Wine is meant to be enjoyed. Add ice, water, soda, spirits, sugar, I couldn’t care less. Chill it, heat it up, serve it lukewarm. Experimenting is part of the fun, and once you know what works for you, like my friend did, there’s no reason not to ask for what you want.

It isn’t just the mixologist in me that thinks we should mix wine but also my inner-Hellenist (everyone has one of those, right?). There’s a proud tradition of mixing wine that dates back to Ancient Greece. In fact, it was considered somewhat uncivilized to drink straight wine, so they usually drank it with water. Not only did the Greeks mix wine with water, but they mixed it with cheese and barley, too, in a ritual beverage called kykeon.

Of course, it’s in mixology where we see wine mixed the most (and not a heck of a lot of cheese cocktails, thankfully). From the spritzer to Glögg, there are wine drinks that call for a range of mixtures and temperature. Below are just a few of my favorites.

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