Hot Mulled Wine (Gluhwein)

I borrowed this picture from Stone Hill Winery website.

This post is more than a month overdue. I started writing it in December, but never got to publishing it. Since February is the coldest month of the winter, it can still warm you up on a long night.

I spent a lot of time searching for a good recipe for hot mulled wine to make it for the last Xmas party. It ended up being an experiment based on all recipes I looked at. It tasted just like the one I have had in cold European countries around Christmas time.

First, I prepared an extract 2 days in advance. I like a strong masala taste, but you can reduce the amount of spices per your taste.

For the extract: 8-10 ~5 cm cinnamon stick pieces 10 cloves 5-7 cardamon pods 1 star anise, broken into smaller pieces 2.5 cm piece of ginger, sliced juice of 2 limes 2 oranges, sliced ~1 cup of sugar 1. Bring 1 liter of water to a boil and add sliced oranges, all of the spices, sugar, and squeeze lime juice into the mix. Boil it for ~5 minutes and then let it cool down in a covered pot. 2. Remove the orange slices, but leave the rest of the spices in for a couple of days. You can taste and see if any flavour is getting too strong and remove that spice later. I did that with ginger after one day. Keep it refrigerated. 3. After two days, drain the extract and keep back in the fridge. Your extract is ready.

For hot mulled wine: 1 bottle of red wine 1/4 liter of extract ~100 ml of port or brandy or dark rum or cherry wine Just before you are ready to serve, pour one bottle of red wine, ~1/4 of the extract and 100 ml of port/brandy/rum into a big sauce pan. When it's warm, taste it and if you'd like it sweeter, you can add more sugar at this point. Slowly warm it up to a simmer without ever bringing it to a boil. It's done! Serve it hot.

Even though it was more than +30C degrees outside that night, just having this hot mulled wine created an illusion of white Christmas for a moment. I call that a success! =)