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To Mull Wine
To one pint of wine add one fourth pint of water which has been steeped with one teaspoon each of mace, cinnamon, and cloves. Sweeten to taste.
A four-line formula that assumes the cook already knows the method: spices are infused in water, the infusion is added to wine, and the whole thing is warmed but never boiled. A few specifics fill the gaps.
- The proportions in cupsOne pint of wine is 2 cups; a quarter pint of water is half a cup. That gives about 2½ cups finished, enough for two generous mugs or four small glasses.
- Do not let it boilThis is the hinge. Bring the combined wine and spiced water only to steaming, around 160-170F. Boiling drives off some of the alcohol and turns the fruit character of the wine flat and stewed.
- Whole spices, not ground"Steeped" means an infusion. The teaspoon measures suggest ground spice, but whole spices strain out cleanly: try a blade or two of mace, a cinnamon stick and six to eight whole cloves, simmered in the half cup of water for ten minutes, then strained. Ground spice will leave grit and a muddier flavour.
- MaceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold as dried blades or ground. It is warmer and less sweet than nutmeg; about half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg substitutes tolerably if you cannot find blades.
- Which wineThe recipe specifies only "wine"; red wine or port are the usual choices for mulling. A dry, fruit-forward red with modest tannin works best; heavily oaked wines can turn bitter when heated.
- Sweetening"To taste" in older recipes often meant more sugar than a modern palate wants. Start with two teaspoons for the pint and add from there, dissolving it in the hot spice water rather than the wine.
- Making it aheadThe spice infusion keeps several days covered in the refrigerator, so the wine can be mulled a glass at a time rather than the whole bottle at once.
Spiced and sweetened wine is one of the oldest prepared drinks in the European kitchen, running from Roman conditum through the medieval hippocras strained through a conical cloth bag, to the mulled wines and negus of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The verb "to mull" in this sense is first recorded in English in the early 1600s and its origin is genuinely uncertain, though it is often linked to the sense of softening or reducing to pulp. Warm spiced wine was also common sickroom fare into the twentieth century, given for chills and convalescence, and some household manuals set it alongside beef teas, gruels and lemonades rather than among holiday drinks. Steeping the spices in water rather than in the wine itself lets the cook control the strength of the infusion and strain out every fragment before the wine is warmed.