Mulled Wine

[coffeekaren]

Love it - tried at home before to make and never tastes as it does in bars etc Loads of recipies about but does anyone have a good tried and tested one to share. Picturing myself doing it from scratch rather than having horrid marks and spencer mulled wine which never take to

Haven't got a recipe, but I usually get some of those bags of spices (e.g. Swartz), a bit like bouquet garni for wine! You can usually buy them in supermarkets. Add sugar to taste (I add quite a lot!) and some orange juice and brandy, and leave it to stew very gently with the lid on the pan for a long time...IMO that's the trick.

I use Nigella's recipe. Or I used to. I now just chuck stuff in a pot and it's always good.

Roughly:

1 bottle red wine
Splash of Rum/ Sherry/ Brandy (I prefer rum)
1 stick cinnamon
1 star anise
1 orange studded with 8 cloves - cut orange into quarters and squeeze a bit when you put them in the pan
1 tbs honey
1 tbs dark brown sugar (I like more sugar than this)
1 mug of Early grey

Quite a big splash of rum

I still use my grandads receipe and he always made his mulled wine with pineapple juice rather than orange and a good bottle of claret. Add the brandy last too or all that lovely alcohol disappears.

second the Schwarz bags - ok, so maybe not quite Nigella's but a compromise between that and the artificial tasting stuff out of a bottle. You definitely need to add sugar.

oh how lovely thank you all = will do trials this week with the schwarz and think will add bits from nigella - all in name of research of course.