Mulled Wine is apparently a very classic Christmas drink in England. According to my expat roommate, it’s the ‘smell’ of the holidays. I don’t think it surprised me much that the smell of the holidays for England is booze, but either way the drink sounded way too scrumptious to pass up – especially because the base is red wine.
As the Christmas season is upon us, this year I decided I was going to be an adult and host two parties. The first one was a pot luck and the second a Christmas exchange party. So I used these as my excuse to buy brandy, red wine and a few (rather expensive) spices.
The drink was so easy to make, and a huge hit at the party. I don’t think one person in that room had tried it before (we are all Canadians after all). I think the general consensus was that it tasted a bit like warm Sangria. I don’t know how many of them had Sangria with cinnamon and anise in it but I can understand where they were making that connection.
I did have a bit of trouble trying to find the spices at my local grocery store. Apparently not a lot of people buy whole cloves or anise stars, go figure.
One batch of this recipe will make enough glasses for about 5 people so if you have a bigger crowd coming over double or triple the recipe as needed. It doesn’t take look either so as long as you have some red wine hanging around and a bit of brandy you can whip up a batch easily and quickly.
Recipe
1 | 750 ml bottle of red (you can use any type, I used merlot)
1/4 cup | Brandy
2 | Anise stars
9 | Whole Cloves
2 | Cinnamon Sticks
1 | Whole Orange
1/4 cup | Honey (I used golden honey)
Steps:
You can keep the pot on the stove on very low heat to keep it warm throughout the night but remember that alcohol evaporates in the heat so if you notice your stash slowly dwindling don’t blame your guests!
