Mulled wine, or spiced wine, or gluhwein, or glögg, gløgg and glögi (Nordic names, not the sound of drinking it) is a popular festive hot drink made from wine, sugar and a pile of spices. Maybe also some citrus rind, but that seems to be a recent thing. The first recorded reference to heated spiced wine is in a play written by a 2nd century BC Roman playwright called Plautus. Popular theory is that Romans introduced wine (regular and mulled) across Europe.
It is often served at Christmas markets in Europe. Our advice: drink mulled wine after you’ve made all your market purchases, not before.
If you’d like to make your own mulled wine this Christmas, try this recipe:
- Buy a bottle of red wine from us.
- At this point, you’re pretty much done, as far as we’re concerned, but here’s the rest of the recipe, just in case:
- Have a look in the kitchen cupboard for all those fancy spices you bought but never used: star anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, ginger, all that sort of craic. Also grab a big heap of sugar.
- Put the wine, sugar and spices into a pan.
- Heat gently. Don’t, whatever you do, boil the bejayzus out of it. If the wine is steaming, that’s hot enough. Ten minutes should do.
- Let the wine cool and stand for a while, so the spices can infuse.
- Reheat.
- Drink.
- Realise you really overdid it on the spices.
