Glühwein (Mulled Wine) Recipe

Pic by R

Brewing homemade mulled wine is definitely one of the best ideas we had in this cold winter. 

As the spices-infused red wine bubbles tranquilly on the stove, it fills the entire kitchen with the warmest intoxicating scent. After a long day of being out-and-about in the cold, nothing feels quite as comforting as sitting around the kitchen table with our hands wrapped around warm hearty mugs of mulled wine. 

I first came across mulled wine years ago in the Christmas markets of Germany, and in the sub-zero weather, the mulled wine stall was invariably the biggest and the most popular stall in the entire market. I wasn't much of a wine drinker back then, but the sweet heady scent of the brew did wonders for my morale as we trudged up and down the wet streets of Munich.

There are a ton of recipes online touting versions of mulled wine, all claiming to be the best, which seems statistically unprobable. I found a helpful blog compiling a Top 10 list of Mulled Wine recipes, and decided to go on from there. Even David Lebovitz has a recipe on its French counterpart: le vin chaud.  This list of mulled wine recipes became our pet project of the season, and we made our way down the list over the course of several buoyant weekends. 

Luckily, mulled wine doesn't call for expensive wine. In fact, a French chef encouraged David to "use the cheapest wine you can find." When a recipe calls for steeping the red wine in a mix of citrus fruits and strong spices, and to let it boil for 20 minutes, most of the finer notes of an expensive red wine would be lost. It's pretty reassuring that enjoying exotic food and drinks doesn't have to come with a hefty price tag. (And if prized wine-makers ever found out what you have been boiling their top-ranged wine, you'll probably get into their bad books.)

The cheapest red wine usually comes in a cask, and the cheapest I'd seen was $11 for 5L at Liquor Market near our place, or $9 for 4L at Dan Murphy. The quantity sounds enormous, but the red wine get reduced by a fair amount after boiling on the stove. In mid-winter, you can even leave the used spices and citrus fruits in the pot to cool overnight, and then add more red wine and sugar to whatever is left in the pot and bring it to a boil again the next day.

The numerous recipes online are usually a rift from the standard recipe: per 750ml of red wine (1 bottle), add 1 cinnamon stick, 1 star anise, 5-6 cloves, 1 orange, 1/2 lemon and sugar to taste. Rather than add another recipe to the collection, I thought it'll be more useful to post a general guide to mulled wine, and have people go off in the taste direction that they prefer. 

Glühwein (Mulled Wine) Recipe

Inspired by Casey at Travelling Cockscrew
Makes 4 servings 

I find that the spices tend to be a lot more pronounced after they had been steeped overnight in the wine, which we much preferred. In the recipe here, I added the spices to boil with the red wine before adding the citrus fruits in, which brought out the spices' fragrance even on the first night. 

Ingredients
750ml (1 bottle) red wine 
3-5 cloves 
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp nutmeg 
1-2 star anise
1/2 tsp vanilla paste

50g brown sugar 
1 orange
1/2 lemon

Steps
1. Add about 3/4 of the red wine into a pot and start heating over a low flame. Add the cloves, cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, star anise, vanilla paste and brown sugar. Cover and let it come to a simmer for 5-10 minutes.

2. Separate the peel and the flesh of the orange and lemon, and add both peel and flesh into the pot. Keep the flesh intact. Cover and let simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add the reserved amount of red wine into the pot. Serve hot. 

Variations
Depending on personal taste, cardamom (3 pods), bay leaves (2 leaves) or 1/2 a lime can be used to adjust the flavor. I've tried omitting the star anise, but it seems to be the spice that I like most, so I'm leaving it in.