I don’t really drink mulled wine, I’m not keen on hot alcohol, which is why I’ve had two gifted bottles of mulled wine kicking around the house for the best part of a year.

I had a vague notion of making them into jelly but it didn’t happen and then I saw this recipe for a mulled wine bellini. It starts off with mulling a bottle of wine. I decided to make syrup instead.

I took two bottles of mulled wine, 200g of sugar, a sliced orange, 8 cloves and a handful of dried hibiscus flowers, I put it all in a saucepan and reduced it down until I had 500ml of syrup.

You can use it in a bellini or as the syrup component of a whiskey sour, it’s really good with gin. (1.5oz gin, 1 oz syrup, 0.5oz lemon juice – shake and serve straight up or on the rocks). You could also just dilute a shot of it with hot water and drink it as ‘mulled wine’. It could even be the basis of a Christmas present, like this.

I’m mostly drinking it with fizzy water or tonic, it’s a useful thing to have in fridge over Christmas.