So I was in Manchester, England last month, and there was a small stand in the city center area that sold mugs of hot wine. There was a deposit on the mug or you could buy it. The business seemed to be generating a lot of income. I never heard of hot wine before and did not feel like trying it. How common is this? Anyone like hot wine?
Mulled wine (spiced) is served warm and properly made, it’s fantastic on a cold winter’s eve.
It’s quite common in Italy (or parts of Italy anyway) during winter, where it is often served during town festivals or during the Christmas holidays. It is usually served very hot. It usuall contains small pieces of cinnamon, among other things.
We’ve made it at our parties. Typically we either use mead or a nice sweet red wine like raspberry or blackberry.
Mmm Mmm Good. It can really take care of you on a chilly day.
Cloves are common too.
Mulled wine is a favourite of my SCA crowd – particularly at the Bloth (our mid-winter feast).
A quick Google on (+recipe +“mulled wine”) turns up any number of likely looking variants. Mmmmmm…
Hot mulled wine is SUPER. Hot mulled mead also super. Love both…
In Germany, it’s called Gluehwein. It’s quite popular in winter at the festivals (like ffabris mentioned in Italy).
I was at the Kristkindlmarkt in Nuernberg (Nuremberg) with my parents when I was six years old. I remember being colder than I’d ever been in my life. The weather was in the single digits, and we’d just moved from Texas.
My mom decided it was a good idea to warm me up with a slug of gluehwein. :rolleyes:
Anyway, it’s kind of an acquired taste. You need to add sugar, or the wine ends up being quite bitter after heating/mulling.
We always have warm spiced wine at Xmas - it’s really good. I’ve never had it any other time, though.
I’ll make it in the winter when I buy wine that is too bad to drink on it’s own.
Looks like I missed out on something quite good. Will have to try some.
Not all hot wine is mulled or spiced.
Yates’s Wine Lodge in Blackpool do a thing called “Blob”
This is fortified Australian white wine, in a half pint glass, filled up with boiling water.
I quite like it and it is great after a long walk on a cold beach in the winter
It’s called svarak in Czech. I love it on cold winter days.
Simple recipe: half bottle of red table wine in a pot, throw in a cinnamon stick and a few cloves. Heat on medium until there is a thin layer of tiny white bubbles/foam floating on top (covering 1/8 to 1/4 of the surface). Pour into 2 Irish coffee mugs (or whatever) and sweeten to taste with sugar. Some people like it with a few sticks of cinnamon so you can put one into each mug. If you fully boil the wine, you will boil off most of the alcohol and give it a sharper taste.
Na zdravi!
-Tcat
Very much a Christmas drink in the UK - by December 26th you can be mightily sick of both mulled wine and mince pies.
Hot cross buns on the other hand, never go our of fashion (with me at any rate ;))
Grim
Sake is often drunk warm during the winter in Japan, and chilled during the summer.
Mulled wine is lovely. In Sweden they have an even nicer version called glögg, which is very sweet and also contains vodka.
cyder?
I remember a recipe from a Peg Bracken cookbook. It called for beaten eggs, some spices and about 5 varieties of heated booze, including wine. As she put it "This will grow hair on sidewalks.
[drool] Mmmm…mulled wine… [/drool]
We only ever drink it in the winter months, and usually mix a bottle of red wine with orange juice, and add cinnamon sticks, slices of oranges, lemons and apples, then heat gently, but don’t boil. Wonderful!
I’ve never put vodka into my gloog! Just cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and other secret spices 
Oh, and it’s not something I’ve ever done with a good bottle of red wine. Usually I do it with some plonk that people have left after a party.
Not necessarily. However, I heard a program on the radio just the other week about glögg and apparently the tradition of heating and spicing wine goes back very long all over Europe and it’s growing. In Sweden, say 10-15 years ago, you could find just one brand and now there are nine.
Unfortunately a friend of mine, who had promised me a bottle of his homemade, didn’t deliver. I tried last year’s batch and it was marvellous. Among other things he had used chili in the spicing, and I must say it tasted better than any factory made glögg I’ve had.