Mulled Wine Mulling Syrup
This is THE BEST Mulled Wine Syrup! Simply add normal red wine to create the most amazingly rich, fruity and spicy Christmas mulled wine.
The reason for creating this Mulled Wine Syrup was twofold. For a start, I needed a rich and Christmassy mulled wine syrup for my new steamed sponge Christmas pudding. This is my take on an alternative to the traditional Christmas pud because 50% of my household is not in favour of the traditional model (personally I adore it, why does no one seem to like anything with dried fruit these days?!).
This new Christmas Pudding alternative will be my next post. It has been tested out on extended family who snaffled it up with great gusto and praise.
The other reason was, of course, to create a base syrup for mulled wine, so that I can conjure up my very own mulled wine out of any bottle of supermarket red plonk whenever I feel the need over the coming festive season (which is quite often).
This Mulled Wine Syrup recipe creates a sweet but not overly sweet syrup because that's how I prefer it. I like a bit of zing to my mulled wine. If you prefer it a little sweeter just take a small saucepan, add the same amount of brown sugar and water, heat gently until the sugar has dissolved and then gradually add to your mulled wine until it reaches the level of sweetness you desire.
As well as being super easy AND saving you the expense of buying mulled wine, another wonderful thing about making your own Mulled Wine Syrup is the gorgeous Christmassy aromas that fill your home whilst it bubbles away.
Use this recipe to make my
Mulled Wine Christmas Pudding
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Why make this mulled wine syrup?
A rich, fruity and spicy syrup ✔️
Make and keep for when needed ✔️
Quick and easy ✔️
Bestows glorious Christmas aromas all around the house! ✔️
Equipment
- Large, heavy-based saucepan or large casserole dish
- Wooden Spoon
Ingredients and Substitutions
Clementines, lime and lemon: you can add the peel as well, but you will need to fish it out before serving.
Cinnamon stick, star anise, nutmeg, cloves, bay leaves: a fabulous bunch of Christmas spices are used in this Mulled Wine Syrup recipe. They all happily mingle to bring Christmas to your glass of mulled wine. If you don't have a cinnamon stick pop in a teaspoon of ground cinnamon instead. The same goes for the nutmeg (replace with ½ teaspoon of ground nutmeg) and cloves (replace with ¼ teaspoon of ground cloves).
A small bottle of red wine (or about 200ml of a large bottle): any red wine will do, we boil the alcohol away from this first lot of wine anyway so the quality doesn't matter. I just use the cheapest mini bottle of red I can buy. you can just use some cheap mulled wine too - the syrup will bolster it up.
Light muscovado sugar: or you can use light soft brown sugar. For a sweeter syrup use caster (superfine) sugar instead.
Instructions
See end of post RECIPE CARD for precise quantities and instructions.
Base Syrup for Mulled Wine
Firstly, prepare all of your fruit. Peel your clementines and split them into segments.
Slice your lemon and lime into slices of about half a centimetre.
Then add all of your ingredients to your saucepan or casserole dish. The larger the saucepan the better as it will have a greater base surface area, meaning your liquid will turn into syrup more quickly.
Heat on a low setting, stirring constantly until your sugar has dissolved. Press your fruit down with your wooden spoon (or I use a potato masher for this!), so that you squeeze as much juice out of the fruit as possible.
Turn the heat up and bring to a rolling boil.
Simmer your Mulled Wine Syrup on a rolling boil until the liquid becomes syrup-like. This can take about 10 minutes.
All we are doing here is reducing the flavours and creating a lovely, rich and intense syrup which will then form the base of our mulled wine. So, when we then add our bottles of wine, we only heat it all through and lose no alcohol content.
Give the liquid a stir every minute or so to ensure that it is not sticking to the base of the pan, but don't stir too much as it will cool the liquid and thus take longer to become syrupy.
Your Mulled Wine Syrup is ready when it has reduced and become a light syrup. Remove from the heat at this point.
If making mulled wine immediately simply take 2 bottles of any red wine and pour them into your syrup. Stir together and heat on a low setting. You just want to warm the wine through for the reasons given above.
Top Tips
- To check if your sugar has dissolved, tip your saucepan to a 45-degree angle so that the liquid slides to one side. If there are no sugar granules still appearing on the base of the pan then you are all set!
- Just need one glass of mulled wine at a time? Decant your Mulled Wine Syrup using a sieve and discard the fruit, cinnamon stick, star anise and bay leaves. Then freeze in ice cube trays. When you fancy a glass of mulled wine, just defrost an ice cube of Mulled Wine Syrup, add your red wine, heat it up a bit and job done!
- Let your mulled wine cool and infuse for a few hours if you can before using it, this allows the flavours to intensify.
- When making mulled wine heat it very gently. Boiling it will destroy that alcohol.
- Use a slow cooker to heat up your mulled wine and keep it at the perfect temperature.
- Add a little mulled wine jam
Variations
For a cheeky ginger kick to your mulled wine take a couple of balls of stem ginger, chop them into about 8 chunks each and add them and 2 tablespoons of stem ginger syrup to your Mulled Wine Syrup ingredients. Heat everything up as above.
Storage
If storing your Mulled Wine Syrup you should decant the syrup first through a sieve and discard the fruits and spices etc.
The syrup will keep in an airtight container in a refrigerator for up to a week.
Alternatively, freeze whole or in ice cube trays (see Top Tips), for up to a month.
Did you try this recipe?
Please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating in the Recipe Card below.
FAQ
Just heat your mulled wine until warmed through and then leave on the lowest heat possible, to keep warm.
Leave to cook completely and then refrigerate. Use within 3 days.
Linked Recipes
Want a nice, rich pudding to go with your Mulled Wine? You may like to give these a go:
Sticky Toffee and Ginger Pudding
Citrus Jam Roly Poly Spotted Dick Pudding
📖 Recipe
Mulled Wine Syrup
Here's what you'll need...
- Large saucepan or casserole dish
Ingredients you'll need...
- 4 clementines or 2 large oranges
- 1 lemon
- 1 lime
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 8 whole cloves
- ½ grated nutmeg
- 2 star anise
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract or bean paste
- 270 g light brown muscavado sugar or light brown sugar (US - 1⅓ Cups)
- 4 tbs Mulled wine jam or any dark berry jam optional
- 185 ml red wine (1 small bottle) or any wine, including mulled wine
Here's what we do...
- First, peel your clementines and split them into segments.
- Slice your lemon and lime into slices of about ½ cm width.
- Then add all of your ingredients into your large saucepan and stir together.
- Heat on a low setting until your sugar has dissolved.
- Turn the heat up to high and bring to a rolling boil.
- Fast simmer until the liquid has reduced to a light syrup. This should take around 5 minutes.
- If making mulled wine, pour in 2 bottles of red wine and heat gently until warm but not boiling.
- If keeping your syrup for later use, leave it to cool and infuse for a few hours then tip the mixture into a sieve pushing the fruit down so that the liquid is separated. Freeze the syrup and discard the fruit.
Supporting Notes
- To check if your sugar has dissolved, tip your saucepan to a 45 degree angle so that the liquid slides to one side. If there are no sugar granules still appearing then you are all set!
- Just want one glass of mulled wine at a time? Decant your Mulled Wine Syrup using a sieve and discard the fruit, cinnamon stick and star anise. Then freeze in ice cube trays. Then, when you fancy a glass of mulled wine, just defrost an ice cube of Mulled Wine Syrup, add your red wine, heat up a bit and job done!
- Let you mulled wine cool and infuse for few hours if you can before using.
- When making mulled wine heat it very gently. Boiling it will destroy that alcohol.
- Use a slow cooker to heat up your mulled wine and keep at the perfect temperature.
- When making your mulled wine from this syrup, pretty it up with sliced orange, chopped apple and slice lemon.
This looks wonderful but I have a couple of questions. Do you add the clementine peel to the pot? Do you have a recommendation on how much to reduce the volume? Can’t wait to make this! Thank you.
Hiya. I love this recipe, it makes the most delicious mulled wine. I wouldn't add the clementine peel otherwise you'll need to fish it out after. Simmer the syrup until you have about 4-6 tablespoons left in the base. You can then top up with wine or, this year, I just used some cheap mulled wine. What I also do now is add some mulled wine jam, or any dark berry jam will be fine, it really intensifies the flavours. If you find that the mulled wine is not quite sweet enough after you've added your wine, make a sugar syrup separately and add it to taste. To do this, take a separate small saucepan, add the same amount of brown sugar and water, heat gently until the sugar has dissolved and then add it to the mulled wine until it has reached the sweetness you want. Enjoy! Talking about it has made me want to make it again! Oh and I also suggest adding some slices fresh orange and lemon (I even added apple too this year!) to your final mulled wine.