If you are looking for a festive drink to serve this holiday season, look no further than this recipe for my Traditional Mulled Wine. This sweet, spicy and warming drink is perfect for any holiday party!
If you have never had mulled wine before, it is basically red wine that has been warmed with a variety of sugar and spices, often spiked with hard liqueur. Sounds dangerous right? It is! The exact recipe for mulled wine can vary depending on where you come from. Different recipes exist across Europe and throughout North American households.
Key Ingredients
You can use any dry red wine that you prefer. Since it is being simmered with spices, it doesn’t have to be high-quality or very expensive. I recommend using a Spanish red table wine for this type of recipe, similar to what you would use when making sangria. These table wines are easy to drink, low in cost, and still taste great.
My recipe for Traditional Mulled Wine uses most of the traditional spices including cinnamon, star anise, clove and some sliced orange. I also amp up the flavour by adding some cardamom pods and fresh ginger. Both cardamom and ginger have great warm and spicy flavours, which make these spices a great addition for mulled wine. It is important to note that using whole spices (i.e. not ground) is ideal in this recipe. You just want the flavour of the spices to permeate through the wine and not the grittiness of the ground spices in the drink itself.
As I mentioned above, mulled wine is typically spiked with another hard liqueur. This can be anything from a spiced rum, to amaretto, to flavoured liqueurs. In this recipe, I use Triple Sec which is an orange flavoured liqueur (often used in Cosmos and sangria). I like the additional orange flavour that the Triple Sec imparts in the drink, plus it is pretty strong! If you don’t have Triple Sec, another great orange flavoured liqueur to add is Grand Marnier. But that’s just good in everything… 😛
The Perfect Holiday Party Drink
Apart from being delicious, this Traditional Mulled Wine is great for serving at holiday parties since you can make a big batch and keep it warm on the stove. Rather than mixing drinks for people all night long, your guests can just help themselves whenever they feel like it. Plus, the longer these flavours blend together, the more tasty it gets! You just want to make sure that you don’t actually bring the mulled wine to a boil as you will effectively cook off all the alcohol.
I hope that you all enjoyed this post and that you will try out this recipe! As always, let me know how it turns out and what variations you put on it! I’m always interested to hear your feedback!
For the full recipe for my Traditional Mulled Wine, click here!
