A Drink for Christmas

Mulled Wine

This is a beautiful drink that can be served during the winter months to warm you up inside and great to serve for friends if they are coming to your house for Christmas dinner. When you taste a good one its hard to stop drinking it because you know you will never taste it again. Mostly all mulled wine in bars are made by the bartender to a basic recipe, but for some reason it seams to taste different each time and the fun in making it is adjusting it to taste. The recipe that follows is in my mind the best I ever tasted and was confided to me by my friend Steve House who was Managing a small bar / restaurant that had a small outside open area and during the winter his Mulled wine was perfect. He only made one and once it was gone rarely made another in the same evening. I hope you can make it as good as he did, but use this recipe and guidelines. My friend also recommends a copper pot and a muslin bag for easy removal of the cinnamon and fruit skins.

Ingredients
2x Bottles of Red wine (preferably Merlot, Cab sav, or Shiraz) Steve says most wines work well but make sure it has a good fruit content. Better from the New World like Australia and Chile
20x Cloves
2 stick Cinnamon
1 Lemon
1 Lime
1 Orange
6-8oz Sugar (white or brown is ok for your preference)
3 oz Triple sec
4 oz VSOP Cognac
4 oz Port (optional)

First thing is to prepare your fruits, push all the cloves in to the orange skin evenly then take off only the skin from the lemon and lime and make sure no pith is left on the skin, then juice the Lemon and Lime and put the juice aside. Take your Pot, put in the wine and sugar (only put half sugar first, add the rest after tasting if you need more) and start to heat up very slowly, and then take your fruit juice and add, and add the Orange with cloves, plus the Lemon and Lime skins, next brake up the cinnamon sticks and drop in. once you feel its nearly boiling bring the heat down and simmer very gently and add the spirits (half first). This is all to taste so after you stir it if you want more sugar add more, if you think its time to take out the cinnamon because its getting to bitter and woody take it out, if you might think you want to spice it up add more cognac, or even add more wine to soften it up, or a few ounces of port. What ever you decide is up to you what you think is nice for you and your guests.

This will serve 8-10 easily a glass of wine (125ml)