Burgundy Bishop

Back in college, my friends and I used to frequent Viva Zapata in New Haven, CT. It was basically a dive bar, but it holds a special place in my heart for introducing me to sangria--a fruit and red wine punch. There are more sangria recipes out there than you can shake a stick at, but I've never found one to match the simple, Kool-Aid like flavor of the Viva Zapata cheapest-route-to-drunk beverage (and bonus wine-soaked fruit salad) until now.

The Burgundy Bishop is basically a simple sangria, but with added rum. Truth be told, the rum flavor is completely lost in this drink, so I assume it's just there to get you dancing on the table that much faster. Which shouldn't take too long even without the rum, as this drink goes down as easy as Welch's grape juice.

Recipe:
.5 oz lemon juice
1 tsp simple syrup
1 oz light rum (Bacardi Silver)
Red wine (Turning Leaf Zinfandel--the cheapest red wine I had on hand.)

Shake lemon juice, sugar, and rum with ice. Strain into an ice-filled highball glass and top with red wine. And Boston's actually says "Garnish with fruits". So I did. Lemon slice, orange slice, cherry. And another cherry. I like maraschino cherries, so sue me.

I had to finish the bottle of wine, so I've been drinking variations of this all week. Really, it doesn't matter what fruits you add, as the sugar+wine taste is the strongest. Currently I'm trying one with passionfruit syrup instead of sugar, which is good, too.