Citrus Spiced Mulled Wine

After arriving at the campground in the rain yesterday, we were thrilled to wake up to a beautiful sunny day. It couldn’t be more perfect for our New Years launch party tonight! We managed to also score a triplet of campsites that will give us plenty of space for mingling and chowing down. We’ve decorated ridiculously for a normal weekend camping, but it is very Dirty Gourmet.

If there’s anything left to do in 2009, its feed our friends one more time. And we must add a warm winter cocktail to the menu. Each drink we tested before this had too strong a flavor and smell of hard alcohol (usually bourbon) and required specific ingredients to make them work. This drink is very easy to improvise. If you have any of these ingredients on hand, it will make your cheap bottle (or box) of wine into a pleasant warming treat at the end of a long adventure.

Citrus Spiced Mulled Wine

Yield

4 servings

Prep Time / Cook Time

10 minutes / 10 minutes, plus 30 minutes for steeping

Activity Guide

Car Camping

Ingredients

• 1 750 mL bottle red wine
• 2 oranges
• 1/4 cup sugar
• whole spices such as star anise, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cardamom pods, and cinnamon sticks
• 2 tablespoons orange liqueur

Tools

• Knife
• Ladle
• Large pot
• Corkscrew
• Cheesecloth or tea ball for holding spices

Method

1. With a vegetable peeler, peel off long strips of orange zest from the oranges. Then juice the oranges and reserve the juice.
2. Place spices either in a tea ball or wrap them in cheesecloth and tie closed with a piece of twine.
3. In a pan, crush the orange zest with the sugar with a spoon to bring out the flavor in the orange zest. Add the wine, reserved orange juice and spice packet. Cover and simmer over high heat until wine is hot. Remove from heat and let stand for about 30 minutes. Discard the spice packet and orange zest.
4. Heat the wine again, just until steaming and add the orange liqueur. Serve hot in mugs.