Geoff’s Glühwein

Mulled Wine. Note the mangled lemon and orange pieces

This is normally more of a Bec thing to do – but it’s Christmas so why not have a go. With this year’s Christmas being a relatively chilly one, I decided that our Christmas Eve celebrations should involve my favourite German Christmassy tradition: Glühwein (mulled wine).

Geoff’s Glühwein recipe

• 2 bottles of whatever Red Wine you have lying around
• 1/3 of a bottle of leftover port (also lying around)
• A packet of cinammon quills
• Some brown sugar
• Grated whole nutmeg (much nicer if you can get the whole ones – plus the insides of whole nutmeg looks a lot like brains!)
• Cloves (we didn’t have any whole ones around so it was pre-grated for us)
• Chinese Five Spice (Smells about right)
• A Dash of Orange Juice
• Two Whole Oranges (from our new backyard, Wooo!) – one sliced, the other squeezed for all its juice and mangled
• One Whole Lemon – likewise juiced and mangled
• A (really decent) dash of Cointreau

Directions:

Put everything except the Cointreau together in the saucepan, over a very low heat. Stir until spices and sugar have dissolved. Taste. Add some more of whatever you think is needed, until the harsh edge has been taken off the Red wine. In theory this should take about 5 minutes, but if you’re doing it right it should take about an hour and a half. Enjoy the delicious aroma permeating through the house. Add the Cointreau close to serving time or once you have taken off the heat (don’t want to lose the alcoholability of the liqueur).

Serves best if left for a number of hours to stew in the rind of the citrus and the cinammon sticks, but if not you can probably just serve straight away – nice and hot.