Hot Wine
Put into the saucepan one pint of red or white wine, the first preferred. Add two heaping tablespoons of sugar, a piece of rind of lemon or orange, and a small stick of cinnamon. Put it onto the fire and stir until the sugar is dissolved. When the wine boils, strain it through some cheese-cloth and pour it into glasses, and serve hot.
A one-pint mulled wine that takes about ten minutes start to finish. The only real decision is how hard you let it boil.
- YieldOne pint fills four small glasses or two generous ones. Scale up freely; the sugar and spice ratios hold.
- The boilBringing the wine to a full boil, as directed, drives off some of the alcohol and can turn a tannic red harsh. Modern practice generally favours holding it just below a simmer, around 170F, for five to ten minutes, which extracts the spice without stripping the wine. Follow the original if you want the milder version it produces.
- Choice of wineAn inexpensive dry red with soft tannins works best: Montepulciano, Barbera, a young Chianti. Avoid oaky or high-alcohol bottles, which go bitter with heat and sugar.
- SugarTwo heaping tablespoons is roughly 40g, which reads sweet to modern palates against a dry wine. Start with half and add to taste once the spice has infused.
- The rindPare the zest with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns the drink bitter over a long infusion. One strip two or three inches long is enough for a pint.
- CinnamonUse a whole stick, not ground; ground cinnamon will cloud the wine and no amount of cheesecloth will catch it. Cassia sticks, the common supermarket type, are stronger than true Ceylon cinnamon, so one short piece suffices.
- StrainingCheesecloth catches the sediment and any bark fragments. A fine mesh sieve does the same job with less fuss.
- The glassesPour hot liquid into thin or cold glass and it may crack. Warm the glasses with hot water first, or use heatproof tumblers or small mugs.
Spiced hot wine has a long history in Europe, with antecedents in the Roman conditum, a wine sweetened with honey and steeped with pepper and other spices, and in the medieval hippocras that was strained through a cloth bag said to resemble Hippocrates' sleeve. In Italy the drink is generally known as vin brulé, most familiar in the alpine north, where it is sold at winter markets from Trentino to Piedmont. The recipe assumes little equipment: a saucepan, a piece of cheesecloth, and whatever citrus was in the house.