Mulled Rosé
Mulled Rose. Taken with absolutely terrible lighting.
Or: How I Stopped Hating and Embraced Basic.
Every year around this time, I have 3 main Google searches: SAD Symptoms, Cheap Tropical holidays, and Mulled Wine. Each of these 3 searches are fruitless for a cornucopia of reasons, notably:
No, I don’t have SAD - I just hate the cold (and have a wicked bad case of Executive Dysfunction) so getting out of bed is an ordeal.
There is no such thing as a cheap tropical holiday, and I am poor.
Crucially, the main ingredient of Mulled Wine, is in fact red wine. And to quote the poet Yasiin Bey “I had a bad experience”
Now, In These Difficult And Unprecedented Times, my alcohol consumption has been growing, and is skewed directly toward hard liquor and cocktails.
But as winter closed in, I thought “Brick, a Mulled Wine would go down a treat!”. And then I thought “I don’t like Red Wine.”. And then I thought “Hey, remember that time you made a Rose Sangria? I wonder if you can make a Mulled Rose. “ And then I realised I was having a conversation with myself and thought about my life and my choices. But then I rallied and made this.
Mulled Rosé
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- prep time: 5 mins
- cook time: 15 mins
Servings: 12
Ingredients:
- 1 largish citrus fruit (orange, mandarin, grapefruit, lemon. You do you).
- 750 bottle rosé wine (a citrus-y one works better here)
- 375 ml apple juice
- 20 g caster sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste, or half a vanilla pod
- 4 whole cloves
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 2 whole star anise
- 4 cardamom pods
- a knob of ginger if you like ginger.
- 125 ml Cointreau
- 1 small Pink Lady apple, very thinly sliced /p>
Instructions:
- Place the sugar and all of the spices into a large, heavy-bottomed pan. If you're adding ginger, add it here. If not, that's chill.
- Use a peeler to zest of the citrus you're using. Go nuts, mix them up. Orange, grapefruit, lemon. Probably not lime, though. Add them to the pan. You need about 1/4 - 1/2 the amount of juice as wine, so squeeze the citrus into a jug and add apple juice to make up the difference. Add all that to the pan, too.
- Pour in just enough of the wine to cover all the ingredients. Place the pan over a medium heat, bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes, or until all of the sugar is dissolved and everything is syrupy.
- Add the rest of the wine and the Cointreau, then gently heat for 10 minutes, until warm and fragrant. Be careful not to let the mixture boil, otherwise you'll boil off all of the alcohol.
- Serve hot, with fresh the sliced apples and additional cinnamon sticks as garnish.
