Chilled Mulled Wine
On Friday Z & I hosted a Thanksgiving Happy Hour. The idea was to have people over casually after work for finger foods, drinks and games. Our apartment is small and doesn’t have a table big enough for more than two people to eat at, so we basically deconstructed a traditional thanksgiving meal into smaller bites. (more on that in another post!) Every party we host has a “serve your own cocktail” station and I assumed for this event we would have something warm in the slow cooker. I knew for sure it would be a mulled wine but after some brainstorming, I decided on a chilled mulled wine! This recipe makes about the equivalent of 2.5 wine bottles.
Ingredients
two bottles of red wine (we chose Velvet Devil Merlot)
two oranges
twenty whole cloves
four whole star anise
two whole cinnamon sticks
two cups of apple cider
one cup of maple syrup
one cup of brandy (Martell VSOP)
seltzer (plain or flavored)
coup or flute glasses
extra cinnamon sticks and fresh cranberries to garnish
Directions
Pour two bottles of merlot into your slow cooker and turn to high. I love my 7 quart slow cooker!
Take the two full oranges and pierce the cloves into the orange skin. You don’t have to, but I cut a few slits into each orange. Place oranges into the slow cooker.
Add the star anise, cinnamon sticks, apple cider, maple syrup, and brandy to the slow cooker.
Cook on high for about an hour. It can be done mulling at that point, but I prefer to turn it down to warm and let it cook another hour or so. Stir a few times.
Turn slow cooker off and let the mulled wine cool off a little. Before you transfer the crock to the fridge, remove the star anise pods.
Keep crock of mulled wine in fridge overnight.
Transfer the wine to the vessel you will be serving in. This can be a pitcher or a bottle. I used a funnel to transfer the wine into two bottles from World Market. This made it easy for guest to pour themselves a drink.
Set up your self serve cocktail station with the chilled mulled wine, seltzer water and coup glasses garnished with cinnamon sticks and cranberries. Our Libbey glasses look and feel much more expensive than they are and we bought these by the case! Guests will fill their glass half full with the mulled wine and top it off with a splash of seltzer. We really loved the mandarin flavored seltzer from Wegmans!
There’s something very special about starting the holiday season off with friends. As Thanksgiving and Christmas come around we can get so stressed over traveling and trying to see every person we love. I know most holidays, I just want to stay at home and relax! But that’s not always what happens and Friday really got me excited for the next few weeks. Do you host a holiday meal for your friends?
