There is something about the summer months that have us creating the most refreshing cocktail to enjoy for happy hours or just because it’s a hot day.  You know at Bubbly Side of Life, we love our spritz cocktails and sangria recipes to celebrate any occasion.  

In fact, if you didn’t see our recent limoncello spritz creations, you will definitely want to check that out once you’re done with this.

Let’s be honest, wine spritzers are the easiest cocktail to make and a great way to impress your guests on a hot summer day.  And there are so many ways you can make them so be creative and please share with us your spritzer recipes at Bubbly Side of Life on Instagram.

Different Ways to Make a Wine Spritzer

There’s no one way to make a wine spritzer. The basic concept is that it’s a wine based bubbly cocktail. You can make it in a variety of ways including:

  • Red wine spritzer using a lambrusco (my favorite), a sweet wine or a lighter red wine like a pinot noir.
  • Rosé wine spritzer
  • White wine spritzer using sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio
  • Fruit-forward wine, we call thse fun wines (you’ll find some of these below)

Sangria vs Wine Spritzer

What’s the difference between a white wine spritzer and a white wine sangria?  or a red wine spritzer and a red wine sangria?  Well, not a whole lot.  They both make the perfect summer sipping cocktail.  

We typically make sangria using a whole bottle of wine, fresh fruit our favorite liquor and top it with cava or sparkling wine.  The key with sangria is letting is sit for several hours so those flavors can blend together.  When we make a wine based summer spritzer, it’s usually just made individually.  But the concept is very similar.

Key Lime Spritzer

I saw this bottle of Key Lime Pie wine at Trader Joe’s and I knew I had to create bubbly drink with it.  I absolutely love key lime anything so I was curioushow this would be.  

  • 2 oz Oliver Winery Key Lime Pie Wine
  • 1 1/2-2oz La Croix Key Lime Sparkling Water
  • Juice of 1 key lime (optional)
  • 1 oz Vodka (optional)
  • Prosecco

Of course, we had to incorporate an ice cube into this somehow, right?  Step 1 is to take a key lime, cut it into fourths and put 1/4 into each ice cube tray.  (We used 2 oz ice cube trays for this one).  Now add the Key Lime La Croix and freeze.

When your ice cubes are frozen, take your favorite wine glasses, add 1-2 ice cubes (we only used one per drink) and add the Key Lime Pie wine and top with bubbly.  

We did add vodka to another version of this and quite honestly, it didn’t make the drink any better, so feel free to play around with that.  And we added a squirt of key lime juice and a slice of key lime for fun to the final drink.  

This is a good bubbly drink with a few simple ingredients that everyone could easily make their own at their leisure. 

Watermelon Spritzer

To start, we created watermelon ice cubes, of course.  

Truth be told, this was not my favorite.  But I also learned something very important making this, apparently I don’t love watermelon juice.  I love the actual watermelon fruit, but not just the juice.  So, keep that in mind when you’re making this one.

​Into each slot of the ice cube tray, add:

  • 1/2 oz 99 Watermelons
  • 1 1/2 Watermelon Juice

Once your ice cubes are frozen, you’re going to add that to your favorite glass.  We used a white wine glass becuase we made round ice cubes and had we used a bigger size, we would have used a rocks glass only because we don’t have wine glasses big enough.  

  1. Next get a fruity wine, there are several that are watermelon and that helps to accentuate the flavor.  Add 2 oz of the kind of wine you chose right on top of the ice cube.  
  2. Now to give this drink a bit more flavor we did add basil.  Take about 4-5 basil leaves, give them a good smack and add them to this drink.  
  3. Top with bubbly and you have a watermelon spritzer.  

We were also playing around with adding mint leaves to this as well.  There’s something about a warm weather bubbly cocktail with delicious summer herbs to really make it feel like summer.  

If you’re a mint lover like me, you’re going to take the same approach as the basil.  And, if you can find it at your liquor store, there’s a bottle of Melon Mint Moscato by Oliver Winery that would make the perfect base to this wine spritzer.

Can I add one new bubbly spritz recipe to this that isn’t wine based?  I promise, it’s worth it.

Grapefruit Spritzer

This might be my favorite of the the three new recipes we made.  Technically it’s not a wine spritzer since we didn’t use any type of wine as the base in this one, but we you could certainly try it with a pinot grigio or another dry white wine. Maybe even a dry rosé.  Should we try it and report back?

We also didn’t add any fresh grapefruit juice to this recipe because it really didn’t need it.  Of the three, this is definitely my drink of choice.

  • 1 1/2 oz St Elder Pamplemousse (Pink Grapefruit Liquor)
  • 1 1/2- 2 oz La Croix Pamlemousse Sparkling Water
  • Prosecco
  • Garnish with grapefruit wedges
  1. In your favorite whine glass or champagne glass, simply combine all of the ingredients.  
  2. Garnish with a slice of grapefruit.

You could freeze the sparkling grapefruit water into ice cubes as well and let this drink come evolve as the ice cube melts. 

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