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MULLED WINE (a French recipe)
Take a wine-glassful and a half of water, a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon, slightly bruised ginger, and cloves, mixed, and three ounces of sugar. Mix these ingredients, and boil till they form a thick syrup, taking care that they do not burn. Pour in a pint of port wine; stir gently till just on the point of boiling; then serve immediately. If a strip or two of orange-rind cut very thin is added to wine thus prepared, it gives the flavour of bishop. In making this beverage in France, light claret is substituted for port wine: the better sorts of vin ordinaire are excellent thus prepared.
A spiced syrup made first, then let down with wine — a more controlled method than steeping spices in hot wine, and it keeps the aromatics from tasting raw. The whole thing takes ten minutes.
- The hinge: do not let the wine boilBring it just to the point of trembling and take it off. Boiled port loses both alcohol and its fruit, and turns flat and slightly stewed.
- A wine-glassfulIn this period a wine-glass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a glassful and a half is roughly 3 fl oz (90 ml). That is very little liquid for 3 oz of sugar, which is why the recipe warns about burning.
- The syrup stageWith so small a quantity of water, use a heavy pan over low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves before letting it bubble. It will reach thick-syrup stage quickly and can catch and darken soon after, which is what the recipe's warning is about.
- WeightsA quarter-ounce of mixed cinnamon, ginger and cloves is about 7 g in total — say a broken stick of cinnamon, a thin slice or two of dried ginger and six or eight cloves. Three ounces of sugar is 85 g, which by modern taste is sweet for a pint; two ounces gives a less sweet drink.
- The pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz (568 ml), a little over three-quarters of a standard wine bottle. One 750 ml bottle scales the recipe up by about a third.
- Strain before servingThe text does not say so, but pour through a fine sieve as you fill the glasses. Whole cloves and bruised ginger left in the jug keep extracting and turn the drink medicinal within minutes.
- BishopThe orange-rind version named here is a distinct old drink in its own right, usually made with a whole orange stuck with cloves and roasted before the wine is added. A few pared strips, white pith avoided, get you most of the way.
- Wine choicePort here means a ruby, not a tawny or vintage. For the French version, any dry, light, low-tannin red stands in for vin ordinaire — heavily oaked wine turns bitter when heated.
- YieldAbout four to five small glasses. Serve in warmed glasses or heatproof cups; cold glass drops the temperature immediately and mulled wine wants to be drunk hot.
Mulled wine belongs to a long European habit of drinking wine hot and spiced, and Victorian cookery books often divide the family into named members: negus (wine, hot water, sugar, lemon), bishop (port with roasted clove-stuck orange), with cardinal and pope variously assigned to claret, champagne or tokay depending on the source. The note that the French use light claret is the interesting part: port-based mulled wine is an English taste, shaped by the eighteenth-century tariff arrangements that made fortified Portuguese wine cheaper in Britain than French wine, while in France the same treatment was applied to ordinary table red. The spice trio of cinnamon, ginger and cloves is older still, descending from the medieval spiced wines called hippocras and piment, which were strained through a cloth bag and drunk at the close of a meal.