Mulled Wine

Total time: A bit over an hour

Source: How to Cocktail

Serves: The three of us drank all of it, but we probably had about six servings altogether.

I was planning on keeping Christmas pretty minimal, since we pulled out all the stops for our Thanksgiving at home, but then I just kept impulse cooking (see: crackers). This was something I had thought of previously (because my sister loves mulled wine), so I made sure I had all of the ingredients, but I hadn’t planned on doing it on Christmas Day. It turned out to be appropriately festive.

I used Rabble Red Blend because I can get it for less than $10 at Costco (which is my qualification for buying any bottle of wine) and I happened to have two bottles of it. The only other red I had two bottles of is one I’ve only been able to buy at Costco when I go to California, so it’s special. It worked well. It was super easy to mull the wine and it tasted delicious both hot and after it had cooled down. It was well-rounded (not too boozy, spicy, or sweet) and easy to drink without being something too easy to drink, i.e. none of us got drunk.

Also, a fun story to go with the picture of the mug: Growing up, all four of us kids had these Christmas mugs. They were each different designs, but in the same style. I took mine from my parents’ house at some point in my adult life, but none of my other siblings were able to do so. This is because, as far as I remember, I broke all of them. None of them were on purpose, but I was exceptionally clumsy and I somehow managed to break everyone’s except mine.