Winter in a glass is what I call mulled wine! Here is a delightfully easy recipe to make some and celebrate the Christmas spirit!
Mulled wine has something special about it. It is almost like winter in a glass for me and screams winter. As a drink, it comes very close to spiced hot chocolate (which my sister is making right now, as we speak) which is saying a lot. Here is my quick and easy recipe to make mulled wine. Make some, drink it warm and rejoice in the spirit for Xmas, the spirit of winter.
Apparently, mulled wine has its origins in the era of Romans. They heated wine to protect themselves from the bitterly cold winter. Slowly the drink became popular all over Europe and as it reached Turkey and other regions, the addition of spices made it what it is today. In the Scandinavian countries, mulled wine took the form of glogi which was mainly drunk by messengers and postmen. Eventually in the 1890s, glogi started to get associated with Christmas. And mulled wine became almost like official Christmas drink.
While we are on warm drinks, One another really awesome recipe I learnt from my dad is the warm rum cocktail. It is another one of my favourites though it really does not get very cold in Bangalore (at least not as much as Delhi) these are two warm drinks with alcohol which I really love.
If you are planning an Xmas party or just a get-together, try this mulled wine for sure!
If you make this, share a picture with me on twitter, instagram or Facebook? I would love to hear what you have to say about it!
PS – This is a post from Dec 2013 which has been updated with new pictures in Dec 2018
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- 1 orange sliced
- 1 lemon sliced
- 100 grams brown sugar
- 3 cloves whole
- 1 inch cinnamon stick
- 1 Star anise
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg powder fresh grated works best
- 1 pod vanilla halved lengthwise
- 1 red wine bottle
- 1 orange peel
- 1 lemon peel
- 1/2 cup orange juice
Ingredients
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- Slice lemon and orange in a thin rounds. Set aside
- Put the sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat, add the pieces of peel and add in the orange juice
- Add the cloves, cinnamon stick, bay leaves and about 10 to 12 gratings of nutmeg.
- Throw in your halved vanilla pod (or use vanilla essence) and stir in just enough red wine to cover the sugar.
- Let this simmer until the sugar has completely dissolved into the red wine and then bring to the boil.
- Keep on a rolling boil for about 4 to 5 minutes, or until you've got a beautiful thick syrup.
- The reason doing this first is important is to create a wonderful flavour base by really getting the sugar and spices to infuse and blend well with the wine.
- It's important to do make a syrup base first because it needs to be quite hot, and if you do this with all of the of wine in there you'll burn off the alcohol.
- When your syrup is ready, turn the heat down to low and add your star anise, orange & lemon slices and the rest of the wine.
- Gently simmer the wine and after around 5 minutes, when it's warm and delicious, ladle it into glasses and serve.
Thanks for this one, Monu. Passing it to my mom, she will love making it.
Plus, she recently received vanilla pods and can’t decide what to do with them other than make essence 🙂
yes no better way use those beans then mulled wine 😉
Which wine do you recommend?
Any decent red wine works for this
I will definitely try this as I make wine at home..