Dance of the Sugarplum Sherry

If you have visions of sugarplums dancing in your head, maybe you'd better lay off the hard sauce. Just what is a sugarplum, you wonder? Traditionally, they're small candies, often made with dried fruit (though not usually including plums, oddly). Have yourself a sherry little Christmas with this Nutcracker sweet drink version, in which plum wine provides the fruity confection flavor.

Read on for the recipe, sugar...

Sugarplum Sherry

• 16 ounces plum wine
• 16 ounces cream sherry
• 1 48-ounce pitcher
• 1 lemon
• 8 martini glasses — or, better yet, sherry glasses borrowed from your grandma
• Sugar

Mix plum wine and sherry in pitcher and refrigerate for at least several hours, until mixture is very cold.

Slice ends off lemon and run slices around the edge of each glass. Pour sugar onto a plate and dip rim of each glass in sugar to coat, then set aside.

Make a lengthwise cut in the lemon just deep enough to cut through the peel. Pull back peel using your thumb and fingers, then cut peel into quarter-inch-wide lengthwise strips. Refrigerate. (If you're more organized than I am, you can do everything up until this point the morning of your party.)

When ready to serve, pour about 4 ounces of sherry-wine mixture into each sugar-rimmed glass, twist a strip of lemon peel over the drink to liberate its oils (yes, Virginia, that's what's called a lemon twist), and plunk it in.

Serves 8

Comments

where can you buy plum wine?

You can get plum wine in most liquor stores and even grocery stores in some states. It's really sweet stuff on its own, but mellows with the sherry.

Stirrings also has a Sugar Plum Martini cocktail mix and rimmer:::

http://www.stirrings.com/mixersugarplum.php