Home › To Mull Port › To Mull Port (Put half a pint of water into)
To Mull Port (Put half a pint of water into)
1233. Put half a pint of water into a clean saucepan, with three ounces of sugar and a little nutmeg and cloves; boil all together for a few minutes; then add from six to twelve glasses of rich port wine: do not allow it to do more than boil for a moment, and pour out in a jug ready for use.
A syrup-first method: the spices are extracted in sweetened water, then the port goes in at the last moment. The proportions are elastic by design, so read the wine quantity as a range rather than a rule.
- What a "glass" meansA wine glass in Victorian recipe books is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, not a modern 6 oz pour, though the measure was not fixed. On that basis six to twelve glasses is roughly 12 to 24 fl oz, or between about half and a full 750 ml bottle.
- SugarThree ounces is roughly 6 to 7 tablespoons of granulated sugar, which is generous against half a pint of water (an imperial half pint being 10 fl oz, not 8). If you are using the lower end of the wine range, scale the sugar back or the result will be cloying.
- Spices"A little nutmeg and cloves" is left to judgement: a quarter of a whole nutmeg, grated, and 4-6 cloves suits the full quantity. Strain the syrup before adding the wine if you want it clear.
- The moment that mattersThe instruction not to let it do more than boil for a moment is the whole technique. Port simmered for any length of time loses its alcohol and its fruit, and turns flat and stewed; bring it just to the edge of a boil and take it off.
- VesselUse stainless steel or enamel. A reactive pan such as untinned copper or bare aluminium will pick up a metallic edge from the wine's acidity.
- Wine choice"Rich port" here means a young ruby or a basic tawny. Vintage port is wasted on mulling, and so-called cooking port is usually too thin to carry the sugar.
- YieldAt the full quantity this makes about a litre, serving six to eight in small glasses or cups. Warm the jug first, as the drink cools quickly once poured.
Mulled port belongs to a family of hot sweetened wine drinks that dominated British winter hospitality from the eighteenth century onward: negus (port or sherry with hot water, sugar and lemon), bishop (port with a roasted clove-studded orange), and plain mulled wine. Port's grip on the British palate is generally traced to the Methuen Treaty of 1703, which gave Portuguese wines preferential duties against French ones, and by the mid-nineteenth century a bottle of port was a fixture in respectable households. Recipes like this one, diluting and sweetening it into a hot drink, reflect a period when hot wine was offered to travellers arriving cold, to invalids, and at the end of an evening -- the sort of everyday domestic drink a compiler of British cookery would record with no explanation at all, because none was needed.