A festive recipe: mulled wine

**Tis very nearly the season to be merry, or so the annual onslaught of Christmas advertising would have you believe. But, sadly, ‘tis also the season to be frost-nipped, shivery and a more than a tiny bit skint due to present buying. **

So what better recipe to round off the term than mulled wine – a glorious hit of festive spices and pure Christmas spirit? Best of all, this recipe is a great salvager of the cheapest of plonks: the ultimate unScrooger for the grinchiest of grinches.

Mulled drinks have a history entrenched in the most British of British characteristics. For, since time began on this tiny island, various Saxons, Vikings, medieval monks, Tudor kings and Victorian gutter snipes have looked out across this great land, stepped across thresholds and said: “Bugger me it’s cold. Got any booze?”

And lo, in that spirit of British culinary subtlety that brought forth Spotted Dick (lardy sponge and currents), each time we turn again to mulling – hot booze. In that reprehensible spirit of British cultural appropriation, we’ve done it with spices filched from across the globe – a 1390 recipe calls for “spykenard de Spayn”, a kind of Indian root.

Exotic herbs and spices were a way for the heads of grand households to flout a bit of luxury in front of their frost-bitten guests, showing off being the true heart of all hospitality.

There has been Purl, a mulled beer with gin, and Bishop, a mulled, fruity port mentioned by Dickens and Swift – technically you can mull practically anything as long as you don’t make the fatal mistake of boiling off the alcohol, or worse, assuming this will magically make a hot martini-ale combo taste like anything other than a vomit waiting to happen.

Theoretically, even mulled Purple is a possibility, but in the interest of tradition (and good taste) I’m just going to give you a basic mulled wine recipe to warm your bones and ward off even the worst “Bah humbug!”

The great thing about this recipe is that you can break from it, mess with it, or just add to it.

I have to admit that I have a deep love for boozy fruit; you can add more, leave it out or even experiment with any extra. If you don’t eat all of the orange slices with the wine, they’re a great addition to desserts or slipped under the skin of a roasting duck or chicken.

If you’re feeling flush (or if you’ve got access to your parents’ liquor stash) you can slip some port in this for an extra festive kick – a small glass should do it. Delia suggests a measly two tablespoons of Grand Marnier or Cointreau (I suggest three shots), Felicity Cloake of the Guardian uses 150 ml of ginger wine, and other recipes call for around 60 ml of sloe gin.

Which, if any, of these you decide to slip in (perhaps when your dad isn’t looking) doesn’t really matter – follow your heart (or liver). The port gives a hint of boozy decadence; tingly citrus in the Grand Marnier delicately augments the peel for a complex flavour combination; ginger wine adds a necessary punch on the coldest of winter evenings.

2 bottles of wine, preferably fruity

3 oranges, blood oranges or clementines, 1 juiced, 2 sliced

Peel of one lemon

175g caster sugar

1 cinnamon stick

5 cloves

3cm finely sliced ginger*

most of a grated nutmeg*

4 bruised cardamom pods*

*These ingredients can be substituted with three generous pinches of mixed spice by all you Cheaty McCheatersons out there.

If you can’t afford fancy oranges, these can be replaced by regular oranges wearing top hats, or if you’re feeling innovative, pretty much any fruit you like- be inventive.

Peel the lemon as decoratively as you can, poke the cloves into the peel (thus preventing them from assaulting your guests) then put it in a large pan with the sugar, spices, and orange juice.

Add just enough wine to cover the lot. Heat all this gently until the sugar dissolves, stirring gently to prevent sticking, then boil for around 5-10 minutes until you have a thick, syrupy mixture.

(Jamie Oliver recommends this method as a way to fully incorporate the sugary spices, but it does have an added benefit: at this point you can wait for it to cool, decant the syrup and save it in an air-tight bottle for later.)

Or you can slosh over the rest of the wine, add the orange slices, heat through (without letting it boil) for around 15 minutes then distribute amongst friends.