Photo: Nahoum and Sons confectionery, New Market, Calcutta. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sangria is not a drink anyone would expect to find in the canon of Indian Jewish cuisine, and yet the idea of an Indian-Jewish sangria makes a certain cultural sense once you understand how many different influences converged in the Jewish communities of colonial India. The Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta and Bombay maintained close ties with the British colonial world and had access to wine, spirits, and imported European goods that the wider Indian population generally did not. Social gatherings in Baghdadi Jewish homes could be quite cosmopolitan, and inventive drinks that blended local spices and fruits with wine would have fit naturally into that world.
An Indian-Jewish sangria starts with a base of red or white wine, to which are added fruits and spices that reflect the Indian environment: mango, guava, lychee, or fresh lime might replace the Spanish tradition of orange and lemon. The spices are where the Indian Jewish identity really shows: cardamom pods, a cinnamon stick, a few cloves, and perhaps a small piece of fresh ginger steeped in the wine bring warmth and complexity that a Spanish sangria does not have. Some recipes add a splash of brandy in the traditional sangria fashion; others use arrack or a locally produced spirit instead.
For Shabbat and festival gatherings, wine has always been central to Jewish observance. The kiddush blessing over wine sanctifies the Sabbath and holidays, and Jewish communities worldwide have adapted local fruit wines and alcoholic beverages to meet this requirement when grape wine was unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Indian Jewish communities, particularly the smaller groups in inland towns where imported wine was difficult to obtain, sometimes made fruit wines from the produce around them. A sangria-style punch blending wine with local fruits and spices is entirely in keeping with this tradition of creative adaptation.
Today, Indian-Jewish sangria appears at cultural events and potlucks organized by diaspora communities, where it functions as a conversation starter as much as a beverage. The drink is an easy and approachable way to introduce people to the concept of Indian Jewish cooking and culture, presenting familiar flavors in a new combination that reflects the community’s unique historical position at the intersection of East and West.
Source: Indian-Jewish Sangria
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A Living Culinary Heritage
Food has served as one of the most durable carriers of Indian Jewish identity across centuries of diaspora and migration. As communities moved from India to Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, they carried their recipes with them — adjusting for ingredient availability but preserving the essential character of dishes refined over generations.
In the Jewish communities of India, the act of cooking traditional dishes is understood as a form of cultural continuity. It connects the present generation to grandmothers who stood at similar stoves, worked with similar spices, and fed families who observed the same Shabbat and celebrated the same holidays. The kitchen becomes a space of memory and identity, where the full complexity of Indian Jewish experience can be tasted in a single dish.
Preserving the Recipe, Preserving the Culture
The documentation of Indian Jewish recipes has become an urgent priority as the communities that created them continue to shrink. In 1948, before the establishment of the State of Israel, there were an estimated 30,000 Jews living in India. Today, fewer than 5,000 remain, most of them elderly. The younger generations have largely emigrated to Israel, where they maintain some connection to their Indian heritage while integrating into Israeli society.
Cookbooks, food blogs, and community archives have played a crucial role in preserving these recipes. Works like “Bene Appetit: The Cuisine of Indian Jews” and various community-produced recipe collections represent efforts by Indian Jewish families to document their culinary traditions before they are lost. Food writers and ethnographers have also contributed by interviewing elderly community members and recording not just the recipes but the stories and memories surrounding them.
For the Indian Jewish diaspora, cooking these dishes is an act of cultural maintenance — a way of honoring ancestors and transmitting identity to children who may have grown up in Tel Aviv, New York, or London, far from Mumbai, Cochin, or Kolkata where their grandparents lived. The food becomes a bridge between generations and across geographies, carrying the taste of a world that is gradually disappearing but whose flavors refuse to be forgotten.