I’ll admit that I’m not a wine drinker. I’ve tried to like it but I don’t usually find it tasty, especially red wine. Most of my drink recipes are made with whiskey which is what I prefer. However, I know that many of you like wine and I’ve always wanted to try making mulled wine so here we go!

After looking at a lot of recipes, I realized most of the ingredients added are just to spice it up a bit. I don’t know much about wine but I do know that I don’t want to waste a really good wine by cooking different ingredients into it. I went to the store and bought a cheap bottle because I would be enhancing the flavor. Feel free to use whatever wine you like best for this recipe!

I also noticed that most of the recipes have some sort of citrus in them. What I chose to do was to use lemon and then a citrus herbal tea. I used Tangerine Ginger from Rishi Tea that came in my Sipsby box. This tea has hibiscus flowers, orange peel, ginger root, citrus oils, licorice root and schizandra berries! Yum yum yum!

I chose to use tea sachets for ease but If you want to use loose leaf, you have to strain the mixture anyway! I wanted to note that this could probably taste good with many teas but I chose an herbal tea because of the high heat. The wine is already potent and I think putting something like black tea in it might run you the risk of getting a bitter flavor.

A few notes about making this recipe. I like to use honey and because of that I added the wine and honey in the pan first and let them mix a little bit. The heat should be on low the entire time. After I added all the other ingredients (except tea bags) I kept it on low with the lid on and just let it simmer. I didn’t really time it, I did it my aroma. Making this wine is delicious but it also makes your house smell so good!!!

Once I felt that the aroma was strong I took off the lid and saw that the mixture was bubbling a little and everything was a bit darker. The cranberries had softened etc. This is when measured the heat of the mixture. My tea bags have the temperature set to 200F and so I made sure the wine was around that temperature then added in the teabags for 5 minutes. If your tea has a lower temperature, let the mixture cool a bit!

Take out your tea bags, strain and serve in mugs! This amount of ingredients was enough for 2 large mugs and a little more. At a party, it would be best to use smaller mugs and this batch could stretch a bit farther. I also garnishes with fresh cranberries, lemon peel and cinnamon!

Enjoy! Do you have a favorite mulled wine recipe?