Mulled Wine

Red wine, spices, and citrus heated together — a 2nd-century Roman tradition documented by Apicius, now expressed across Europe as Glühwein, gløgg, and vin chaud.

Mulled wine is one of the oldest continuously practiced drinking traditions in the Western world, with documented origins in the Roman Empire of the 2nd century CE. The Romans heated wine with honey and spices — a preparation documented by Marcus Gavius Apicius in his culinary collection De Re Coquinaria — and spread the practice across their conquered territories from Britain to North Africa to Mesopotamia. The technique served both pleasurable and practical purposes: heat killed bacteria in suspect wine, spices masked the flavor of wine that had begun to oxidize, and the combination of alcohol and warmth provided genuine protection against cold in an era without central heating. Medieval European households continued and elaborated the practice, and the 14th-century English spiced wine called Ypocras or Hippocras — named for Hippocrates' physician's sleeve straining cloth — was a sophisticated version sweetened with honey and flavored with ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. By the Victorian era, mulled wine had fragmented into distinct national traditions: German and Austrian Glühwein, Scandinavian gløgg, French vin chaud, British mulled claret, and the wassail bowl — the cider-and-ale punch associated with Twelfth Night traditions in the English countryside. All share the foundational Roman concept of heated wine with sweetener and aromatic spice, adapted to local ingredients and seasonal celebration.