Holiday Spiced Wine Recipe (Mulled Wine)
This Holiday Spiced Wine recipe is perfect for the holidays! Warm, comforting, and packed with festive orange and aromatic spices like cinnamon, cloves and star anise this easy Mulled Red Wine recipe serves a crowd and is surprisingly quick to make. It’s ideal for all your holiday parties!
Regardless if you call it holiday spiced wine, mulled wine, glühwein or glögg, warmed, sweetened spiced wine has been a popular holiday drink for centuries, often found at European Christmas markets and kept warm by the bar in British pubs.
And it’s easy to make it at home for your next holiday party!
Why you’ll love this Hot Spiced Wine Recipe
Imagine it. It is cold and crisp outside, but inside a big pot of warm, spiced wine that just smells of the holidays is simmering away on the stove ready to be ladled into glasses for you to wrap your hands around and sip.
It’s like a holiday stove-top potpourri recipe that you can actually drink. It’s a wine cocktail that is super low effort and makes a big batch of cocktails for holiday parties.
Related: Warm Plum Sangria with Red Wine
How perfect is that?
Even here in California where it is still pretty mild around the holidays one sip of this easy Mulled Wine recipe is enough to make me feel festive. It’s one of my favorite cocktails to serve when the weather is cold.
Ingredients
Here’s what you need to make an easy Mulled Wine:
- 1 bottle fruity red wine
- Triple Sec
- 1 orange, sliced into rounds
- whole cloves
- cinnamon sticks
- whole star anise
- maple syrup, to taste
A fruity red wine works best in hot spiced wine, but any bottle will work. Cheap wine (as long as it is drinkable!) is fine here as you’re adding lots of flavors, sweetness and spice.
If you don’t have maple syrup to hand, simply stir up to 3 tbsp of white sugar into the warm wine to dissolve, to taste. My Vanilla Cinnamon Simple Syrup would be a delicious alternative, too.
While I like these spices, you can use whatever you have on hand. If licorice flavor isn’t your favorite, leave the star anise out altogether.
See the printable recipe card for quantities and full recipe.
Directions
Step 1
In a very large saucepan or casserole dish, stir together all the ingredients except for the Triple Sec and the sweetener.
Step 2
Over a medium high heat, warm the wine so it is just simmering (only just starting to have tiny bubbles) before reducing the heat to low. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
Step 3
Add the Triple Sec, then add the maple syrup to sweeten to taste.
Step 4
Strain with a fine mesh strainer if you don’t want to ladle the spiced wine straight into the glass.
Serve
Serve in heatproof glasses with your favorite garnishes (see below!)
Additional Garnishes
If you’re serving this Mulled Christmas Wine straight out of the pot you can just ladle some of the infusing spices into each glass. Make sure you let everyone sipping know that each glass may have whole spices in it so they can sip carefully.
But if you’re straining it here are some pretty (and aromatic!) garnish ideas for each glass:
- More orange or lemon slices
- Orange peel twists
- Cinnamon sticks
- Whole Cloves
- Fresh cranberries
- Fresh Rosemary sprigs
Variations
- Change up the spirits – Triple Sec is lovely here as it ups the festive citrus flavor of the spiced wine but brandy is the more traditional addition that makes it more warming and gives it quite a kick! Grand Marnier and cherry brandy also work well. Don’t go buying a bottle just for this though – Triple Sec is the most versatile and you’ll get the most use out of it on your home bar! The Polish sometimes add a shot of vodka to their spiced wine.
- Add orange juice – if you want to lower the amount of alcohol fresh bottled orange juice is a common addition added to taste in place of the Triple Sec.
- Add ginger – coins of fresh ginger can be infused in the wine or 1/8 tsp of ground ginger for a warming kick.
Top tips
- If you’re scaling the recipe up for a party, instead of slicing the orange quarter it and using a skewer stud the skin with little holes and push the cloves into the holes. That way you don’t need to strain the mixture before serving: it is pretty if you get a piece of cinnamon, orange or anise in your glass – annoying if you get a clove! The orange will keep the cloves in place.
- If you’re serving this spiced wine throughout an evening, keep it on a low heat just below a simmer: you don’t want to let it boil as the spices will become too strong and the alcohol in the wine and Triple Sec will cook away! If heated too high too long, the flavor becomes too concentrated.
Frequently Asked Questions
White wine has a very different character so you’d be better off looking up a specific white mulled wine recipe.
You don’t want the spices sitting in the wine more than 2 hours as it will become too strong, but you can get ahead by making the wine, straining it, storing it in the fridge for up to 3 days and gently warming it before serving over fresh garnishes in each glass.
Leftover mulled wine can always be stored and re-warmed as above, but if you’re serving it at a party and the spices have been sitting in it it might be too strong to drink again. It will however be delicious in a sorbet or used to make a holiday jello!
More Easy Holiday Recipes
- Simple Christmas Cosmo Recipe with Vodka
- Best Eggnog Dump Cake Recipe for the Holidays
- Best Cranberry Moscow Mule Recipe for Thanksgiving
- Easy Cranberry Christmas Cake Recipe (with Cake Mix!)
- Best White Chocolate Popcorn Recipe for Christmas
- This White Wine Cake tastes just like Christmas
- Red Wine Cocktails with Tequila
- Spiced Rum Cupcakes Recipe
- White Wine Margarita
- Sparkling Rose Cocktail
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A Comforting Hot Spiced Wine Recipe for the Holidays!
Ingredients
- 1 bottle fruity red wine
- 1 orange sliced
- 10 whole cloves
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 2 star anise
- 2 tbsp Triple Sec
- 1 1/2 tbsp maple syrup to taste
Instructions
- In a very large saucepan or casserole dish, stir together all the ingredients except for the Triple Sec and the sweetener.
- Over a medium high heat, warm the wine so it is just simmering (only just starting to have tiny bubbles) before reducing the heat to low. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Add the Triple Sec, then add the maple syrup to sweeten to taste.
- Strain with a fine mesh strainer if you don't want to ladle the spiced wine straight into the glass.
- Serve in heatproof glasses with your favorite garnishes (see below!)
Notes
-
- More orange or lemon slices
-
- Orange peel twists
-
- Cinnamon sticks
-
- Whole Cloves
-
- Fresh cranberries
-
- Fresh Rosemary sprigs
-
- Change up the spirits – Triple Sec is lovely here as it ups the festive citrus flavor of the spiced wine but brandy is the more traditional addition that makes it more warming and gives it quite a kick! Grand Marnier and cherry brandy also work well. The Polish sometimes add a shot of vodka to their spiced wine.
-
- Add orange juice – if you want to lower the amount of alcohol fresh bottled orange juice is a lovely addition.
-
- Add ginger – coins of fresh ginger can be infused in the wine or 1/8 tsp of ground ginger for a warming kick.
-
- If you’re scaling the recipe up for a party, instead of slicing the orange quarter it and using a skewer stud the skin with little holes and push the cloves into the holes. That way you don’t need to strain the mixture before serving: the orange will keep the cloves in place.
-
- If you’re serving this spiced wine throughout an evening, keep it on a low heat just below a simmer: you don’t want to let it boil as the spices will become too strong and the alcohol in the wine and Triple Sec will cook away!
