Mulled Wine

Warm up with our special Ottimo's mulled wine recipe!

Ingredients

• 2 oranges
• 1 lemon
• 1 lime
• 200 g caster sugar
• 6 whole cloves
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 3 fresh bay leaves
• 1 whole nutmeg, for grating
• 1/2 vanilla pod
• 2 star anise
• 2 bottles Chianti or other Italian red wine

Method

Peel large sections of peel from your citrus. Put the sugar in a large saucepan over a medium heat, add the pieces of peel and squeeze in the clementine juice. Add the cloves, cinnamon stick, bay leaves and about 10 to 12 gratings of nutmeg. Throw in your halved vanilla pod and stir in just enough red wine to cover the sugar.

Let this simmer until the sugar has completely dissolved into the red wine and then bring to the boil. Keep on a rolling boil for about 4 to 5 minutes, or until you've got a beautiful thick syrup. It's important to make a syrup base first because it needs to be quite hot, and if you do this with both bottles of wine in there you'll burn off the alcohol.

When your syrup is ready, turn the heat down to low and add your star anise and the rest of the wine. Gently heat the wine and after around 5 minutes, when it's warm and delicious, ladle it into glasses and serve.