In the quiet days of Don Porfirio, before Franco, before war, were noble twin brothers in La Mancha born. Into peace. Into stillness. The wind whistled on the plains, but the people of Toledo, the people of Cuenca, the people of Albacete, understood this was but a whisper of God.
For Don Simon and Don Garcia, La Mancha was a bounteous garden. They were blessed with orange, they were blessed with pineapple, they were blessed with many plums. And from their seventh birthdays, they were blessed with wine. Bliss was theirs.
The people of La Mancha too, were blessed with orange, blessed with pineapple, blessed with many plums. And the people of La Mancha were blessed with wine. But theirs was not bliss. They picked the grapes. They crushed the grapes. They made their wine. They loved their wine. But when they drank their wine, they forgot. They forgot about orange. They forgot about pineapple. In the villages, in the fields, they forgot about plums.
The people of La Mancha were tired, the people of La Mancha were torpid. Their teeth fell out and their skin was scorbutic. Their bodies rotted, like the fruit that fell from the trees, uneaten in the sun. The nourishment of the grape on the vine was fermented instead into liquor, into poison. Yet still the people of La Mancha drank their beloved wine. And still the people of La Mancha rotted.
From their villa on the hillside, from their turrets, from their gardens, the brothers saw this. Despite their privilege, despite their breeding, they wanted to help the people. They read Marx, they read Engels. They understood that it was nature, not God, that had provided the people of La Mancha with fruit to eat, fruit to live. And on their sixteenth birthdays, when the two boys became men, they swore an oath that no longer would the fruit of La Mancha rot on its ground.
At first, they talked with the people. They reasoned with them. They eulogised the orange, they sang the praises of the pineapple. They spun hymns to the plums. But the music fell upon deaf ears. Still the people of La Mancha drank their wine. Still the people of La Mancha rotted among the plums.
Don Simon wept, Don Garcia cried. But the tears dried, and they resolved anew to fulfil their pledge. In the villages, in the fields, they carried orange, carried pineapple. Carried plums to the people of La Mancha as they crushed their grapes in fervour. But this time, they showed the people of La Mancha, Don Simon, Don Garcia, they showed them how to crush the orange, how to crush the pineapple, how to crush their plums. They showed them how to make fruit juice. And the people of La Mancha, they rejoiced. They drank the juice, and for a while they were happy, for a while they were wholesome. But the people of La Mancha, they remembered. They remembered the wine. They forgot the juice. And once again the people of La Mancha rotted.
This time the brothers' tears did not dry. This time the tears ran in rivers to the floor, soaking their espadrilles. Hope was lost, hope was dead. The brothers peered into the gargantuous vat of fruit juice they had prepared for the people of La Mancha, and saw reflected in it only their own failure. Then, like the people of La Mancha, they too forgot orange, they forgot pineapple, they forgot plums. Like the people of La Mancha, they remembered wine, and drank it, through day and through night.
When they had drunk all almost all their wine, when they were barely able to see, when they were barely able to stand, Don Simon and Don Garcia climbed the ladder into the eaves of their barn and wrested the final barrel from its place. Drunk as they were, they stumbled. Drunk as they were, they fell. The barrel of wine slipped from their care. The barrel of wine fell into the vat of fruit juice on the floor below. The brothers dived in after it, desperate to swallow as much of the wine as possible before it was adulterated by the juice.
They were too late though, for the wine and juice were already one. The brothers swallowed anyway, draining the vat in which they were now trapped, until finally they could stand on its base with their heads above the surface of the liquid. And Don Simon knew. And Don Garcia knew. They knew that hope was alive once more. This was the answer. Again they cried, this time with joy, this time so hard that blood vessels burst behind their eyes and red tears ran down their cheeks into the liquid around them. And the brothers decreed there and then, that their gift to the people would be known forevermore as sangria.
What happened next is common knowledge. The people of La Mancha found that they loved sangria even more than they loved wine. In time, their sores healed, their welts faded, and their skin glowed with health. They stood straight and strong, throwing off their torpor. The people of La Mancha went to work for Don Simon, they went to work for Don Garcia, harvesting the fruit and turning it into sangria, enough for the whole of Spain to bathe in its glory.
What is not on record however, is what it was that tore the brothers apart so acrimoniously in the years that followed. Some say that the billions of pesetas they made from sangria corrupted their original ideals. Others say Don Simon felt guilty for exploiting the people of La Mancha, rather than supporting collectivisation, and that when unionised labour forced the brothers to pay wages in money rather than sangria, Don Garcia raged at his brother's acquiescence and split the business in half. There are rumours of a disagreement over a tiny pony.
But what we do know is that these two old men are the today the bitterest of enemies, their twin empires of sangria production locked in a death spiral that has riven a nation. If their story tells us anything, it is that blood and sangria do not mix.
Don Garcia sangria is available in Carrefour for €1.74 for a 1.5l bottle, and Don Simon sangria is €2.68 for 1.5l at Lerclerc.
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