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.
This looks like it would be really good even just with lemonade, which would be perfect for our hot southern hemisphere Christmases! But the whiskey sour idea is good too… maybe I’ll have to try both.
If you do let me know what you think!