Mulled wine

Oh, what a difference an h can make:

Mulled whine – A moan that you have been thinking about for some time.

Mulled wine – A delicious sweetened and spiced warm wine drink.

Obviously, we are far more interested in a tasty wintry alcoholic beverage than a little rant, so here we go:

Mulled wine is a traditional winter drink, especially around Christmas, across huge parts of Europe. Most people would think of English mulled wine, of Scandinavian gløgg, or German glühwein, but close variations are also traditional in Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Italy, and Latvia.

So many millions of people can’t be wrong, can they?

No, and there are several reasons why this particular drink has now been popular for thousands of years. Namely that it makes you all warm and cozy on the inside, is wonderfully easy to make, and tastes like liquid Christmas.

About the ingredients

One of the great things about mulled wine is that there is no set in stone recipe. What follows is the way that I like to make it after a bit of experimentation, but if you don’t have one of the ingredients then you can either leave it out or substitute something else in.

You can mull either red or white wine, although red is much more common. Whatever you use it should be reasonably dry and nice and fruity. I virtually always use red wine, but if you are trying white then a nice riesling would be a good place to start.

Don’t try and use a very cheap wine, if it tastes bad straight from the bottle, it will taste even worse when it is heated.

One final note, is that you don’t want to use an aluminium pan because the acid in the wine and citrus juice reacts with the aluminium and everything comes out tasting metallic.

So, let us mull

1. Peel the clementine, together with half of the lemon and lime. The peel should be in large pieces, and you should make sure that there is not too much pith attached to it, or it will turn bitter.

   Throw the peel together with the juice of the clementine into a large pan.

2. Add the rest of the dry ingredients to the pan, and pour in just enough wine to cover them.

3. Bring the mixture to the boil and simmer for about five minutes, stirring occasionally.

   The idea of this is to let all of the spices infuse into the wine. If we did it with the whole bottle of wine, then all of the alcohol would evaporate off, and we don’t want that!

4. Add the rest of the bottle of wine and a splash of brandy, and give it a good stir. Heat it until the wine reaches about 60-70°C, but don’t let it boil.

Done!
You can reheat it as many times as you like if it starts to get cold, as long as you are careful not to let it boil.

Love it, hate it, have a different recipe? Go and discuss mulled wine on the forum.