Mulled Wine with Orange and Warm Spices
A bottle of red wine simmered low with orange and whole spices until the kitchen smells like December — the one drink in this larder you serve hot.
- Serves
- 6
- Prep
- 5 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Written
Method
-
Combine the wine, orange slices, honey, cinnamon, cloves, and star anise in a saucepan over medium-low heat.
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Warm gently, stirring to dissolve the honey, until steam rises off the surface but the wine never comes close to a boil.
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Lower the heat to keep it just below a simmer and let it steep for 20 minutes, until the wine has turned deep garnet and smells more like spice than alcohol.
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Stir in the brandy and warm through for another minute.
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Ladle into mugs, giving each one an orange round and a cinnamon stick.
Notes
Heat is the only technique here, and restraint is the only skill — a real boil cooks off the alcohol and turns the fruit and spice bitter, so keep it at a bare, lazy steam the whole time. The 20-minute steep is what actually builds the flavor; rushing it just gets you warm wine with spices floating in it.
Cheap, dry, and unremarkable is exactly the right bottle for this — anything you’d be sad to simmer down is wasted here. It holds on the back of the stove on low for an hour if people are arriving in shifts, and reheats fine the next day if you end up with extra.