Cook and Scale
Glühwein (German Mulled Wine)
4 servings · 30 min total
Christmas-market red wine warmed gently — never boiled — with orange, cinnamon, cloves and star anise. Twenty minutes of steeping is what makes it taste of the market stall.
Ingredients
- 7½ dl red wine, dry and fruity
- 1½ dl orange juice
- 1 orange
- 1 lemon
- 2 cinnamon stick
- 6 ground cloves
- 3 star anise
- 60 g white sugar
- 1 pinch ground cardamom
- 1 pinch ground nutmeg
Contains: Sulphites
Allergen info is best-effort — please verify yourself.
Method
- 1.
Prepare the citrus — Wash the orange and lemon in hot water and dry them. Slice the orange into 1 cm rounds, pare three wide strips of peel from the lemon and squeeze its juice into a small bowl.
- 2.
Dissolve the sugar in the wine — Pour the wine and orange juice into a saucepan, add the sugar and set it over low heat, stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved. Do not let it come near a boil at any point.
- 3.
Steep the spices — Add the orange slices, lemon peel, lemon juice, cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, cardamom and nutmeg. Hold the pan at 70-80°C — steaming, with no bubbles breaking the surface — for 20 minutes.
- 4.
Taste and balance — Taste and adjust: another spoonful of sugar if the wine is sharp, a squeeze more lemon if it tastes flat. Fish out the cloves and lemon peel, which turn bitter if they steep much longer.
- 5.
Serve hot in glasses — Ladle into heatproof glasses, dropping a slice of orange and a star anise into each. Serve at once, and keep any leftovers at the same gentle heat rather than reheating them hard.