Mulled wine
Based on Wikipedia: Mulled wine
In the 1946 Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life, a 293-year-old guardian angel named Clarence walks into a bar and faces a dilemma. Having been dead for centuries, he has no idea what people drink anymore. After fumbling through his options, he settles on his order: "Mulled wine, heavy on the cinnamon and light on the cloves."
Clarence, it turns out, was ordering something ancient even by his standards.
Wine That Glows
The first recorded mention of heated, spiced wine appears in a Roman comedy. Plautus wrote his play Curculio during the 2nd century BC—more than two thousand years ago—and in it, characters drink wine that has been warmed and seasoned. This wasn't a quirky Roman innovation that died with the empire. As the legions marched across Europe, conquering territories and establishing trade routes, they brought their drinking habits with them. Wine, vines, and recipes for spiced wine traveled all the way to the Rhine and Danube rivers, and even to the Scottish border.
The drink survived the fall of Rome.
By 1390, English cooks had their own version. A medieval cookbook called The Forme of Cury provides instructions for making "Ypocras"—named after Hippocrates, the Greek physician, though he had nothing to do with it. The recipe reads like a spice merchant's inventory: cinnamon, ginger, galangal (a root related to ginger), cloves, long pepper, nutmeg, marjoram, cardamom, and grains of paradise. If you couldn't get grains of paradise—a West African spice that tastes like a peppery blend of cardamom and coriander—the cookbook helpfully suggests rosemary as a substitute.
Mix all of this with red wine and sugar. Heat it. Drink it. You've just made something that would have been recognizable to Roman soldiers, medieval English nobles, and a fictional angel from Bedford Falls.
What Is Mulling, Anyway?
To mull something is to heat it gently while infusing it with spices. The word comes from Middle English, where "mullen" meant to soften or make muddy. When you mull wine, you're not boiling it—boiling would burn off the alcohol and turn the spices bitter. Instead, you heat the wine to somewhere between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius (140 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit), warm enough to release the aromatic oils from the spices but cool enough to preserve the wine's character.
The process transforms cheap wine into something remarkable. The heat unlocks flavors that would otherwise stay locked inside whole spices. Cinnamon bark releases cinnamaldehyde, the compound that gives it its distinctive warmth. Cloves contribute eugenol, a chemical so potent it's used in dentistry as an anesthetic. Star anise adds anethole, the same compound that gives licorice its flavor. Orange peel contributes limonene, which brightens everything it touches.
These aren't just pleasant scents. In the days before central heating, a cup of hot spiced wine was medicine. The warmth helped cold bodies recover. The alcohol killed some bacteria. The spices—particularly cloves and cinnamon—have genuine antimicrobial properties. In North Macedonia, people still prepare heated wine with pepper as a folk remedy for colds and flu.
The German Glow
If you've ever visited a Christmas market in Germany, Austria, or the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, you've encountered Glühwein. The name translates roughly as "glowing wine," a reference not to any literal glow but to the warmth you feel after drinking it—and perhaps to the temperature at which it's served.
The Germans have been drinking this for centuries. The oldest documented Glühwein tankard belonged to Count John IV of Katzenelnbogen, a nobleman who holds a peculiar distinction in wine history: he was the first person known to have cultivated Riesling grapes. His gold-plated silver tankard, fitted with a lock to prevent servants from sneaking sips, dates to around 1420.
Modern German Glühwein follows a fairly standard recipe. Red wine forms the base. Cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, orange, and sugar provide the aromatics. Sometimes a vanilla pod makes an appearance. You can order it "mit Schuss"—with a shot—which means someone has added rum or another spirit to make it even more warming.
But Germans, being Germans, have refined the concept further. Feuerzangenbowle takes the basic Glühwein recipe and adds theater. The name means "fire tongs punch," and here's how it works: you place a cone of sugar that has been soaked in rum on special metal tongs over a bowl of warm spiced wine. Then you set the sugar cone on fire. As it burns, caramelized sugar drips into the wine below, sweetening it and adding a faint smokiness.
This drink became so culturally significant that a 1944 German film was named after it. Die Feuerzangenbowle, starring Heinz Rühmann, became a holiday tradition in German households—families still watch it every Christmas, then prepare the drink as their grandparents did.
Scandinavian Variations
Travel north from Germany and you'll find glögg (Swedish and Icelandic), gløgg (Norwegian, Danish, and Faroese), or glögi (Finnish and Estonian). The spelling changes, but the concept remains: hot, spiced wine for cold, dark winters.
The Scandinavians, however, approach their mulled wine differently than the Germans. Where German Glühwein tends to be made fresh and drunk immediately, Scandinavian glögg is often prepared in advance. The spices steep in the wine for at least an hour, sometimes overnight, allowing the flavors to marry more completely before the mixture is reheated for serving.
The spice blend also differs. Cardamom features more prominently in Nordic versions, reflecting the Scandinavian love affair with this aromatic seed. Bitter orange appears more often than sweet. Some recipes call for stronger spirits—vodka, aquavit, rum, or brandy—either mixed directly into the wine or used to soak the raisins that will be served alongside it.
And there will be raisins. Unlike in Germany, where Glühwein is typically drunk on its own, Scandinavian glögg comes with accompaniments. Blanched almonds, dried cloves, and raisins are served in the cup or on the side. In Sweden, you'll find gingerbread cookies. On December 13th—Saint Lucia's Day—the drink pairs with lussebullar, saffron-scented sweet buns studded with raisins. In Denmark, the traditional partner is æbleskiver, spherical pancakes dusted with powdered sugar and served with strawberry jam. Norwegians prefer risengrynsgrøt, a sweet rice pudding, alongside their gløgg.
The Scandinavian countries have made it easy to prepare glögg at home. Grocery stores sell pre-mixed spices and spice extracts specifically for this purpose. State-controlled alcohol shops like Sweden's Systembolaget and Finland's Alko stock ready-made glögg that needs only heating. You can buy alcoholic versions, low-alcohol versions, or completely non-alcoholic versions made with fruit juice instead of wine.
The Victorian Smoking Bishop
Not all historical mulled wines have survived. In Victorian England, the "smoking bishop" was popular enough that Charles Dickens mentioned it in his writing. The drink has since faded from cultural memory—hardly anyone makes it today, and most people would have no idea what you meant if you offered them one.
This happens to drinks. They rise and fall with the fashions of their time. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, the Victorian equivalent of a lifestyle bible, included a mulled wine recipe in its 1869 edition. The spices and methods she recommended would have seemed normal to her readers but might strike modern drinkers as odd.
What persists is the core idea: take wine, add spices, add heat, drink it when the weather is cold. The specific formulations change. Star anise, now common in British mulled wine, would have been exotic and expensive in medieval England. Grains of paradise, once standard, have become obscure. Sugar replaced honey in many recipes, then honey made a comeback in health-conscious versions.
Around the World in a Wine Glass
The concept of heated spiced wine exists wherever grapes grow and winters bite.
In France, particularly in the Alpine regions where skiers need warming, vin chaud ("hot wine") combines red wine with honey, cinnamon, and orange. The French insist it should not be too sweet—a reasonable position, given how syrupy mulled wine can become in less careful hands. In Geneva, Switzerland, vin chaud is the drink of choice during L'Escalade, the December festival commemorating the city's defeat of an attempted invasion by the Duke of Savoy in 1602.
Italians in the northern regions drink vin brülé, a name borrowed and slightly altered from the French vin brûlé ("burnt wine"), though the French themselves don't actually use this expression. The Hungarians make forralt bor, typically using their famous Egri Bikavér ("Bull's Blood of Eger") as the base wine. Sometimes they add Amaretto for extra complexity.
In the Czech Republic, you'll find svařené víno (colloquially svařák), while Slovaks drink varené víno. Both names mean "boiled wine." The Croatians, Slovenians, Bosnians, Serbs, and Montenegrins all have kuhano vino or kuvano vino—again, "cooked wine." The Macedonians call it vareno vino or greeno vino, "boiled wine" or "heated wine," and typically make it with wine from the Tikveš region, sweetened with sugar or honey and spiked with cinnamon.
Bulgaria contributes greyano vino ("heated wine"), distinguished by the addition of peppercorn alongside the more common honey. Romania and Moldova have vin fiert, often featuring black pepper and honey. Latvia serves karstvīns ("hot wine"), sometimes made with grape or currant juice and Riga Black Balsam, a traditional herbal liqueur. Lithuania offers glintveinas or karštas vynas.
Polish grzane wino ("heated wine") resembles the Czech version, especially in the south. The Poles also make grzane piwo—heated beer with mulling spices—particularly using sweet Belgian-style beers that complement the warm aromatics. At Polish Christmas markets, you can find vodka-spiked mulled wine, because of course you can.
Portugal's vinho quente uses the country's famous fortified wines—Madeira and Port—as the base, making for a richer, more intensely flavored drink. In Porto, the local variation is called Porto Quente, because naming drinks after the city that makes the wine just makes sense.
Russia and Ukraine drink glintveyn, borrowed from the German Glühwein along with the recipe. But Russia has older traditions too. Dusheparka is a historical mulled wine, and sbiten—usually a non-alcoholic hot herbal drink—can be made with red wine replacing some or all of the water.
Southern Hemisphere Winters
In the southern half of the world, winter arrives in June. Brazil's southern and southeastern regions celebrate Festa Junina with vinho quente or quentão, made with red wine, cinnamon sticks, and cloves. Some versions add cachaça, the sugarcane spirit used in caipirinhas, for extra warmth.
Chile has two names for its mulled wine, depending on where you are. In the south, it's candola. In the north, it's vino navega'o—from navegado, meaning "sailor" or "navigated." (Purists will tell you navegado is a hypercorrection, but language evolves.) The drink appears throughout Chile during winter, traditionally on Saint John's Eve, June 23rd. This Spanish Catholic feast day replaced Wetripantru, the Mapuche New Year, which falls on the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere—the same night that's Midsummer in the north.
The Logic of Hot Spiced Wine
Step back and consider what all these variations share. Every version uses local wine—whatever wine happens to be cheap and plentiful in the region. Every version adds warming spices from the trade routes that connected medieval Europe to Asia: cinnamon from Sri Lanka, cloves from Indonesia, cardamom from India. Every version adds sweetness, whether from sugar, honey, or fruit. And every version serves the drink hot during cold months.
This isn't coincidence. Before modern heating, winter meant being cold. Rich people might have fireplaces; poor people huddled. A cup of heated wine provided genuine physiological warmth that tea and water could not match, because alcohol causes blood vessels to dilate near the skin's surface. You feel warmer (even though you're actually losing heat more quickly—but tell that to a medieval farmer with no central heating).
The spices served multiple purposes. They made cheap wine taste better. They masked flavors that might have turned during storage. They had genuine antimicrobial properties in an age before refrigeration. And they smelled wonderful, which matters more than people often admit—the aromatics of clove and cinnamon and orange peel signaled comfort and celebration.
The sugar helped too. In a time when calories were precious and easily obtained sweetness was rare, the combination of alcohol and sugar provided quick energy. Your body converts both to heat. On a cold December night, with snow falling outside and no furnace to switch on, a mug of sweet, spicy, warm wine was as close to a survival food as a drink could be.
Modern Mulled Wine
Today, of course, we don't need mulled wine to survive winter. Central heating, insulated clothing, and electric blankets have made the practical necessity obsolete. And yet the drink persists.
Part of this is tradition. Christmas markets across Europe still serve it because they always have, and the smell of warm spiced wine has become synonymous with the holidays. Removing Glühwein from a German Christmas market would be like removing the tree—technically possible, but why would you?
Part of it is genuine pleasure. Hot drinks are comforting in cold weather for reasons that go beyond mere temperature. The act of wrapping your hands around a warm mug, feeling the steam rise to your face, inhaling aromatics before you sip—these are sensory experiences that satisfy something beyond thirst.
And part of it is the democracy of the drink. You don't need expensive wine to make excellent mulled wine. In fact, you shouldn't use expensive wine—the spices will overwhelm any subtle notes you're paying for. A cheap, fruity red is perfect. The transformation happens in the mulling, not in the bottle.
Contemporary British mulled wine typically includes orange, lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise or fennel seed, cloves, cardamom, and ginger. Some people boil the spices in sugar syrup first, then add the wine. Others simply heat everything together. Shortcuts exist: you can buy tea bags filled with mulling spices, drop one in a pot of wine with some orange slices, and call it done. Brandy or ginger wine makes optional additions for those who want more kick.
Non-alcoholic versions have become common, made with grape juice, apple juice, or fruit punches instead of wine. In Germany, Kinderpunsch (children's punch) appears at Christmas markets alongside the Glühwein, offering the warm spiced experience without the alcohol. Scandinavian countries sell alcohol-free glögg that can pass for the real thing, especially when served with the traditional raisins and almonds.
The Persistence of Warmth
Two thousand years separate Plautus from your local Christmas market, and yet the drink in your mug would be recognizable to a Roman legionnaire. The wine might come from different grapes. The spices might be different species from different continents. The cup itself has certainly changed. But the fundamental idea—take wine, heat it, spice it, drink it when you're cold—has survived the fall of empires, the rise of religions, the age of exploration, two world wars, and the invention of central heating.
Some traditions persist because they're imposed by authority. Some persist because people forget to question them. Mulled wine persists because it works. It tastes good. It smells like celebration. It warms you from the inside. And on a cold winter night, with family around and the year winding down, those simple pleasures are enough.
Heavy on the cinnamon. Light on the cloves.