Mulled Wine

But, Baby, it's cold outside!

The most wonderful time of the year hasn’t truly started until you’ve indulged in your first cup of mulled wine. It’s a winter treat enjoyed since antiquity. People continued enjoying it throughout the Middle Ages and it remained a Yuletide fixture in Victorian England. We still can’t get enough of the stuff, especially once it’s time to deck the halls and don your gay apparel (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. . . ).

Wine has been a major part of human culture since we first discovered it. Unfortunately, weather can be fickle. Sometimes a bad harvest hits a vineyard and the grapes are underwhelming. Heating wine and infusing it with spices has long been a favorite strategy for masking flavors from spoiled wine or weak vintages. Thanks to the rise of trade through Istanbul during the Roman Empire, new spices like ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg flooded into Europe and improved food and drink across the Continent.

The practice of mulling survived the fall of the Empire and medieval Europeans liked it even more than the Romans did. Europeans found that steeping herbs, spices and other ingredients in wine for medicinal purposes made a pretty potent drink. Heating it was an effective way of fighting off winter chill, at least for a little while. So it’s no surprise that mulled wine took off bigly in countries like Germany, Austria and Scandinavia. The German’s glühwein is still a staple in Christmas markets and the ever-popular Nordic glögg is often taken to the next level with the addition of akvavit, brandy or vodka.

At what point did mulled wine become equated with Christmas? We have Charles Dickens to thank for that. He included a passage which mentioned Smoking Bishop, a popular mulled wine of the day, in his classic A Christmas Carol.

Today the method remains the same. Cheap red wine + spice + something sweet = mulled wine. Why cheap, you ask? It’s best not to waste the good stuff in your cellar. The sugar and spices mask a wine’s finer points.

If wine isn’t your thing, try mulling cider this winter, or cranberry juice, to (w)assail your senses and warm your spirit. You may not be able to bottle holiday cheer, but a hot cup of mulled wine is a great way to get Christmas in a glass and survive the season with a comfortable glow.

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