During the coldest winter days, the tastiest drink to keep you warm is a mulled wine. At most Christmas markets or on the ski slope, unfortunately, in most cases only an alcoholic version of this drink is offered. However, an alcohol-free version of this winter classic is very easy to make. So if you don’t want to drink alcohol and still enjoy a delicious mulled wine, just follow the recipe below. Feel free to pass it on to the exhibitors at the Christmas market or your favorite après ski bar, maybe they will have an alcohol-free version on the menu next time.
In the recipe below we make an alcohol-free glühwein as served on the skiing slopes in Austria, but without the alcohol. We use one bottle of non-alcoholic wine of 75 cl. The recipe is good for about 4 cups of mulled wine. Which non-alcoholic wine you use is not that important, but keep in mind that the wine will help determine the taste. We also use a piece of ginger in this recipe, this is usually not used in a traditional Austrian glühwein, but it makes the mulled wine a little bit spicy.
What do you need?
75 cl. Alcohol-free red wine
25 cl. Water
1 orange
1/2 lemon
2 cm. ginger
8 cloves
1 bay leaf
1 stick of cinnamon
Agave syrup
How do you make it?
- Rinse the orange and half the lemon and cut them into small pieces (about 8 pieces per orange, 4 for the lemon).
- Cut the ginger into five pieces, you don’t have to peel the ginger.
- Pour the wine into a pan.
- Add the orange, lemon, ginger, cloves, bay leaf, water and cinnamon stick to the wine.
- Warm the wine but try not to let it boil. Keep the lid on the pan (otherwise too much will evaporate).
- Leave the mixture on the fire for about 45 minutes and try to keep it just below the boiling point.
- In this non-alcoholic mulled wine it is no disaster if he cooks a little, not cooking is mainly for the recipe with alcohol because otherwise the alcohol evaporates. However, if you let your mixture boil too hard, too much of the wine will evaporate, even with the lid on the pan.
- After 45 minutes, turn off the heat and let the mulled wine rest for another half hour with all ingredients still in the pan.
- Now you can pour the mulled wine through a sieve and add the agave syrup.
- How much agave syrup you use depends a bit on your own taste. For us, 3 tablespoons are sufficient. You can of course make the recipe sweeter or less sweet if you want.
- If the mulled wine became cold in the meantime, you can heat it back up to around the boiling point before pouring out.
- Enjoy!
