How to Make Mulled Wine

Spooky season, sweater weather, and changing leaves…these are some of my favorite things! Fall weather calls for certain celebrations such as pumpkin picking, getting lost in a corn maze, and jumping in leaf piles but how do we keep that fall spirit alive in the middle of a pandemic? Well, we make mulled wine!

Get creative with your wine stash and make a fun drink or two. The options are endless but some of our favorite fall recipes include renditions of mulled wine! Now let’s teach you how to make them so you can enjoy the drink on the days when you don’t want a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Here are 3 mulled wine recipes you’re sure to love!

1. Traditional Mulled Wine
2. Mulled Wine Hot Chocolate
3. Hot Mulled Apple Cider Sangria

How to Find the Best Wines for Your Recipes

Let’s start with the most important ingredient, the wine! With many cocktails or mixed recipes including wine, most people tend to want a bottle that’s $20 or less. Sippd knows we can find a bottle you’re sure to love while staying within your wanted price point.

With our free Google Chrome extension, we make it easy to find and order wines that match your taste and budget preferences. Providing you with personalized wine recommendations to 1,000s of wines online, you can shop our I Just Love The Seasons: Autumn Edition deck to explore 5 curated lists matching you with the bottles perfect for your staple fall activities. Shop our Fall Wine Cocktails list and find the best wine for your fall-inspired boozy drinks! We’ll give you a 1 to 100 score (what we call your Taste Match) to each bottle so you can know how you’ll like the wines before you order it.

Install the Sippd extension onto your Chrome browser now to browse the Fall Wine Cocktails curation! Not on your computer just yet? Create your profile on mobile here and we’ll remind you to hop on to your laptop and find your next favorite wine with us later.

1. Traditional Mulled Wine

What You’ll Need

Our traditional mulled wine recipe incorporates ingredients you most likely already have at home, making this a quick and easy activity.

• 1 (750-ml) bottle red wine 

Sippd can help you find that perfect bottle by personally getting to know what you like and dislike, the more you rate the more we recommend!

• 1 orange

A sliced orange (or any citrus, like lemon or lime) will help add in a kick of flavor to our mulled wine. If you want a less bitter drink, peel the skin off first.

• 8 whole cloves

Find these dried, unopened flower buds of the clove in your spice aisle.

• 2 cinnamon sticks

If you don’t have cinnamon sticks, feel free to use ground cinnamon!

• 2-star anise

Star anise is a versatile Chinese and Vietnamese spice, so use it for this recipe and in others when simmering meat and poultry! 

• 2-4 tablespoons sugar, honey or maple syrup 

Add your sweetener of choice or none at all, just be sure to taste the mulled wine before adding sugar!

Prep Time

Here at Sippd, we don’t like to make things complicated because let’s face it, life is full of tough choices and wine shouldn’t be one of them. This recipe calls for 5-minute prep time, and 20-minute cook time. In total: 25 minutes of easy, breezy cooking, followed up with hours of delicious sipping.

Let’s Get Cooking: It’s easy as 1, 2, 3…4

1. Combine Ingredients
2. Simmer
3. Strain and Season  
4. Let’s Get Sipping

1.    Combine Ingredients

Life can’t get any easier than this, combine all ingredients in a saucepan and stir it.

2.    Simmer

Next, you’ll heat the pan over medium-high heat, making sure the wine barely reaches a simmer. Make sure to avoid bubbling as you don’t want to boil off the alcohol. You will then reduce the heat to low, cover, and let the wine simmer for at least 15 minutes.

3.    Strain and Season

With the help of your lovely assistant (a strainer), remove and dispose of the orange slices, cloves, cinnamon sticks, and star anise. Give your mulled wine a taste and if you’d like it a tad sweeter, slowly stir in your desired amount of sugar, honey, or maple syrup.

4.    Let’s Get Sipping

Our favorite part, sipping! Serve your mulled wine warm in your favorite fall-inspired mug and top it all off with an orange slice.

Pro-Tips for your Traditional Mulled Wine

This recipe is straightforward and easy to make, but let’s elevate your experience! Below are some hidden tricks or additions that can be a game-changer for your mulled wine:

•  If you don’t want to use a saucepan, use the next best thing: a slow cooker. Turn the slow cooker on medium heat, and cover. The wine will be brought to a gentle simmer. Turn the dial down to low heat and continue cooking for a few minutes. Once it begins to simmer, turn the slow cooker to “Keep Warm.” Let the wine sit for about half an hour before you serve.
• Add ¼ cup of brandy for a more booze-forward drink (feel free to use bourbon, cognac, Cointreau, or your favorite liqueur).
• For variety, you can also use white wine, but ensure it’s a dry white. Use Sippd to find the perfect bottle for more experimentation!
• Play around with new taste profiles. In place of the cloves and star anise, steep 1 or 2 chai tea bags in the mulled wine. If you’re serving up your mulled wine in the evening, you may want to go for a caffeine-free tea.

2. Mulled Wine Hot Chocolate

When we think fall, we picture ourselves sitting around a fire, with a blanket wrapped around us and a mug of hot chocolate in hand. But what if we could make that delicious hot chocolate boozy? Hold on to your pumpkins because fall just got a little bit better.

What You’ll Need

• red wine (300 ml)

Feel free to use your favorite red wine. Tell Sippd what some of your favorite reds are and we’ll tell you what we think you’ll love!

• 1 cinnamon stick 
• 2-star anise
• 4 cloves
• 6 allspice berries

Allspice berries can be found in a grocery store spice aisle or even online! Don’t let the name fool you, allspice is actually an individual spice (really more like an herb) that is usually grown in Jamaica and Indonesia. So where does the name come from? Allspice berries taste like a variety of spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and peppercorn!

Don’t be alarmed, you will be able to use this delicious spice on other things! Allspice berries are great in savory foods such as meat, sausages, stews, soups, curries, and fish…YUM

• 2 tbsp demerara sugar

Demerara sugar crystals are slightly larger than white sugar crystals and are a bit stickier to touch. The flavor here is also a bit richer than white sugar.

• 500 ml whole milk
• 1 cup of dark chocolate chips 

The Process:

1. Pour and Heat
2. Heat then Strain
3. Let’s Get Sipping

1. Pour and Heat

The first step is always the easiest, pour the red wine into a pan and add the cinnamon stick, star anise, cloves, allspice berries, and demerara sugar. Gently heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

2. Heat then Strain

In a separate pan heat the milk, then gradually whisk in the dark chocolate. We won’t judge if you sneak a piece for snacking during this process. Strain the red wine into the chocolate pan and stir. 

3. Let’s Get Sipping

The most delicious part of all: serve in small glasses or cups with extra cinnamon sticks and get sipping!

The wine you choose does not have to be expensive, especially if you’re experimenting with this new recipe. Let Sippd help you find wine bottles that fit your price point- our useful tool will help you filter out which wines will work best for your palate and budget! 

3. Hot Mulled Apple Cider Sangria

That name is a mouthful, isn’t it? Well, the taste of this delicious drink will make up for it! This recipe calls for fall staple ingredients like cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, ginger, and vanilla beans, so head to your pantry for this one. 

What You’ll Need

• 1 (750 ml) bottle red wine

For this recipe you want to stick to a dry red, the cider will be plenty sweet! You can hop on Sippd to help you find the perfect red for your hot mulled apple cider sangria. 

• 4 cups apple cider
• ¼ cup honey 
• ½ cup spice rum

The spiced rum will help bring in that much-needed kick to our adult-friendly drink. 

• 1 apple (sliced)
• 3 clementines

For this, 2 of your clementines will be halved and 1 clementine will be zested. The citrus notes will add a delicious citrus aroma.

• 3 cinnamon sticks
• 8 whole cloves
• 3-star anise
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg 
• 4 thin slices of fresh ginger
• Apple and clementine slices

You can use slices of apple and clementine for garnish in your drink. 

The Process: 

1. Combine and Heat
2. Toasty
3. Simmer
4. Let’s Get Sipping

1. Combine and Heat

Recipes that tell you to throw everything together in a pot truly deserve a medal. Combine the wine, cider, honey, rum, apple slices, clementines, and zest in a large pot (or slow cooker) over low heat.

2. Toasty

While your liquid is warming up, toast the cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, vanilla, nutmeg, and ginger in a small pan for 5 minutes. The aroma is amazing and will make your house smell like autumn. After the 5 minutes is up, you will add all the ingredients you just toasted to the liquid in your large pot. 

3. Simmer

Allow the sangria to simmer for 25-30 minutes. You will need to stir every once in a while to help the honey dissolve and the spices to incorporate. Do not allow the mixture to boil.

4. Let’s Get Sipping

Serve while hot, garnish with apple and clementine slices, and a pretty star anise to compliment the glass. Enjoy!

Enjoy Your Mulled Wine Creations

Fall calls for fun, so get creative in your kitchen with our three mulled wine recipes you’re sure to love! If you used Sippd to find and order the perfect bottle for each recipe, let us know by tagging us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter @drinksippd. We’d love to see how your fall drinks turn out with help from your personal sommelier 😍

If you want some more fall-drink inspo, check out our Fall Wine Cocktail article that features 4 other recipes perfect for your seasonal festivities.

Install Sippd and let’s #GetSipping on mulled wine this autumn! 🥂