mulled wine

[rje66]

It's getting close to that time of year, any one got  decent recipes
Ta

[irish_goat]

I make a variation of mulled wine every Christmas morning with the following ingredients. The fruits added normally depend on what's in the house at the time.

2 oranges
1 lemon
1 lime
200 g caster sugar
6 whole cloves
1 stick cinnamon
3 fresh bay leaves
1 whole nutmeg, for grating
1 vanilla pod, halved lengthways
2 star anise

Peel the fruit and then bung everything(except the star anise) in with a little red wine. The trick is creating a syrup with all your ingredients before adding the wine. You'll get better flavour and you don't end up boiling off all the alcohol as well. Once you have your syrup made you can add the rest of your wine (2 bottles) and the star anise. Normally I do a mulled cider as well with the same spices and M&S do a half decent non-alcoholic mulled wine too if you have designated drivers over.

[Bubbles]

I normally free style it every year, but the trick is to never let it boil, and finish with a big glug of christmas cheer - dark rum or brandy for preference. Plenty of dark brown sugar and orange peel too. Cider is great for mulling too - think it's called wassail.

[Dunkel]

+1 Bubbles - I usually add brandy to taste. And try and use a fruity red wine with not too much tannin - Chilean or USA Merlot best.

[Bubbles]

That's good to know, Dunkel. I usually use a Merlot, just out of habit. Usually something cheapish from Tesco, not what I'd normally go for in wine, but grand for mulling.

I must say I like irish_goat's suggestion of using a vanilla pod.

Jaysus, vanilla pods and brandy... that's an upmarket mulled wine right there.. 

[Bubbles]

This reminds me - I did a spiced applewine during the summer - that's definitely going to get mulled at Christmas time. A drop of Calvados would be a nice addition to this I'd say.

[irish_goat]

The cool thing about mulled wine is that it's easy to experiment. You can leave any of the above in or out and can add other things like honey/brown sugar, cardamon, ginger, port, brandy and/or Cointreau. Some recipes would involve dried fruit like raisins and apricots too. Wine wise I normally use a cheap enough rioja but I don't think you can go too wrong as long as you don't pick something too heavy.

Have a friend working for a large multinational who says the Christmas party caterers have been instructed to use €30 a bottle wine for the mulled wine. 

[Bubbles]

Can you drop my CV into them? They look after their staff well!

Ginger sounds like a great addition - I don't think I've done that before. Cointreau sounds the business too. Would Triple Sec work just as well, as I have a bottle of that..?

[irish_goat]

You can sub triple sec for Cointreau yeah. Cointreau is really just a fancy branded triple sec.

[rje66]

Thanks for replies, will give it a shot at the weekend, just for research, in preparation for the Christmas of course....I presume it will need to be used up fairly quickly

[dcalnan]

We just use the Green Saffron mulled wine spices now since they launched them, picked up 5 for a tenner today. Should be enough for Christmas.