What is Mulled Wine?

Posted by Chris on November 15, 2007

This dreamy article from Zonkette at Food and Drink about seasonal change from sunny BBQ days to cozy mulled wine evenings covers the basics of mulled wine from the usual spices and ingredients in mulled wine recipes to an overview of mulled wine history.

What exactly is mulled wine? Made from red wine, mulled wine (and its various counterparts around the world such as vin chaud, Gluhwien, Forralt bor and vin brulé) has various spices added to it and usually served hot. Sounds perfect for that cold winter evening doesn’t it? A little known fact however is, that mulled wine was not originally created as a warm and festive alternative to regular red wine. Rather, mulled wine was created as a way to make red wine taste better at a time when it would expire and go rancid rather quickly. The addition of a combination of honey and spices helped flavour and thus allowed wine that had turned slightly to be consumed again.

Some basic mulled wine knowledge to take away from Zonkette:

• Mulled wine (aka, gluhwein) is great in front of the fire
• Mulled wine was originally created as a way to make turned/old wine taste better
• There are a billion mulled wine recipes online
• Make mulled wine with cheap wine
• Boiling mulled wine removes the alcohol from the wine
• If you don’t want to mix spices in wine, try using mulled wine mix