Winter in a glass is what I would call mulled wine! 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. As a drink, it comes as close to spiced hot chocolate (which my sister is making right now, as we speak). So 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, the mulled wine has its origins in the era of Romans. They heated wine to protect themselves from the cold winter. This drink became popular all over Europe and the addition of spices in the drink started as it was believed to promote health. 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.
Now mulled wine is a very popular drink through out the world. And what I love about this drink is that when it is really cold outside, the hot drink warms you up completely. And you can play around with the spices too. If there is a particular spice you want to stand out (read cinnamon in my case!) you can just adjust the spices according to your taste.
One another really awesome recipe I learnt from my dad is the warm rum cocktail. That is also one drink which I always look forward to making when it is really cold. 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!
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- 1 orange
- 1 lemon
- 100 grams caster sugar
- 3 cloves whole
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 bay leaves fresh
- 1/2 to 1/4 tsps nutmeg whole for grating or powder
- 1 pod vanilla halved lengthwise
- 1 Star anise
- 1 red wine bottle
Ingredients
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- Peel large sections of peel from your orange and lemon using a peeler.
- Put the sugar in a large saucepan over a medium heat, add the pieces of peel and squeeze 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 and the rest of the wine.
- Gently heat 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 😉