Iced Tea Sangria

A wine cocktail as delicious and refreshing as a Long Island Iced Tea but with only three inexpensive ingredients. It’s the perfect budget-friendly drink for your next summer party!

For the 4th of July weekend this year I had a big party at my house and was invited to a potluck. I needed something fantastic for drinks at both events. But since we were talking about a lot of people to serve, I wanted something really inexpensive and also easy to make.

My plan had been to make some kind of wine punch using a 3 liter box of white wine, seltzer water, and frozen concentrated juice, ideally something tropical. This is one of my go-to’s and yes, I know I need to put the recipe on my site soon! Anyhow, the grocery story unfortunately only had orange concentrate and that just didn’t seem summery enough. I wondered the beverage aisles looking for something to mix with the wine instead, and eventually spotted the big container of powdered iced tea.

And with that, Iced Tea Sangria was born!

How Much Iced Tea Powder To Use?

There’s one thing to keep in mind when making this wine cocktail. You need the concentration of the iced tea to be quite strong so that the acidity of the wine doesn’t overpower the tea.

In the recipe below I have essentially doubled the amount of iced tea powder that would usually be needed for the amount of liquid used. That is, we’re going with one 750ml bottle of white wine and 1 and 1/2 cups of water, which ends up being just over a quart. The Lipton container says to use 1/3 cup of powder for a quart, but my recipe below lists 1/2 of a cup. That was truly what I found was needed to get a nice full iced tea flavor with the wine there. You’ll still taste the wine too, but you’ll really taste the iced tea.

Note that you can put even more iced tea if you’d like. I find it too sweet but a friend who was over liked it with more and so I added enough to make it 2/3 of a cup of powder and then she loved it.

Another thing that you can do to increase the iced tea flavor is to not use water at all. Instead, use ice tea! So, one of the times that I made this, I used some store-bought sweetened green tea instead of the water. Even before adding the iced tea powder, the drink had a nice refreshing flavor. Once the powder was added, it was sweeter with a more pronounced iced tea flavor.

Can You Use Brewed Sweet Tea Instead Of Powder?

I’ll say that it’s for the reason above, I don’t think it would be as good to use already made sweet tea. I mean, it will be tasty to mix together sweet tea and wine, but it won’t have as much tea flavor and it won’t really taste like a long island either.

If you want to use brewed iced tea, I’d recommend making your own and making it extra strong and extra sweet. Also, you’ll want to add some lemon juice to it since the iced tea powder has a lemon flavoring in it.

The amount of strong sweet tea that you’ll need is basically half of the amount of wine that you’re using. So if you are using one 750ml bottle of wine, which is 3 cups, you’ll want 1 and 1/2 cups of the tea.

Can This Wine Cocktail Be Doubled or Tripled?

Yes, you can simply double or triple (or more) the amounts in the recipe. I actually more than tripled it both times that I made it by using a 3 liter box of wine, which is equivalent to four 750ml bottles. I got an inexpensive box of dry white, which turned this drink into the most budget-friendly cocktail I’ve ever served. The water and iced tea powder stretched it all even further allowing it to serve even more people.

To make those conversions easier for you, if you have a 3 liter box of wine, you’ll use 1 and 1/2 liters of water (that’s 6 cups), and then also 2 cups of iced tea powder. This will yield 4 and 1/2 liters of cocktail, which is enough for 25 servings that are 6 ounces each.

How Should I Garnish Iced Tea Sangria?

The parties where I served this drink were not fancy. For the one at my house, I mixed it in the insert of my Instant Pot (yes really!) and used a ladle to serve it. To the mixture in the Instant Pot, I added chopped citrus fruits and some strawberries.

For the potluck, I used a funnel to pour the drink into empty 2L soda bottles. The big batch was just over the amount that would fit into the 2 bottles, which meant I had some leftover for us for when we got home. I didn’t garnish that at all. I just put a label on the bottles so that people at the party would know what was in there and know that it contained alcohol. Guests put ice into the cups and poured the iced tea sangria over it directly from the bottles. It was so good that I don’t think anyone noticed that it didn’t have any fruit!

I really can’t wait for you to try this one. It’s so delicious, and really, it seems so impressive and fun even though it’s the simplest thing. If you’re looking for more delicious easy drinks, check out my new easy Ranch Water Recipe over on TheCookful.

Enjoy! -Christine xo

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