I am not one of those people who find the holidays stressful and depressing, I don’t object to the commercialization of a religious holiday and I even like good fruitcake, but I do not understand why people of normally good sense and good taste have to spend two months wallowing in kitsch and sentimentality starting every November.

But this blog is about wine, so how does my misanthropic rant relate? Well, there are certain seasonal drinks traditions that can have the same effect on me as the fifty-seventh hearing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a single day.  I can stomach one glass of commercial eggnog a year but the one Chris Kringle cocktail (cranberry juice, crème de Menthe and sparkling wine) I once had was enough for a lifetime.  The ingredients do not belong in the same sentence, let alone the same glass and the only reason anyone ever thought of it was the color scheme.  I would not want my birthday celebrated with such a drinks and it would not surprise me if Christ’s wounds bleed afresh and the angels weep each time one is served.

However, tradition is stronger than I am, so let’s examine a few seasonal drinks that, made with a little attention to detail, aren’t half bad.

Starting with wine, there is a tradition of  “mulled wine” (hot spiced wine) at the holidays season, but let’s be clear that they originated as ways to use wine that was unfit to drink in any other form. By adding sweeteners and spices, one could cover up the off-flavors and get it out of the way just before the first wines of the next vintage started coming in.  Technical improvements in winemaking, storage and transportation mean fewer bottles with flavors that must be masked, but there is one perfect candidate: Beaujolais Nouveau. This wretched product, which was invented as a marketing gimmick, makes a much-ballyhooed arrival on the third Thursday in November.  Most of it is unfit to drink in unadulterated form, but it is just fine for mulling. It is fruity, low in tannin (which can become more aggressive when the wine is heated) and not good for anything else

A Basic Mulled Wine Recipe

Start by mixing equal parts of sugar and (water, let’s say 2 cups of each) and bring it to a boil. Add a few sticks of cinnamon, a few (very few) cloves and the zest of two oranges and lemons. Turn off the heat and let it all steep for about 15 minutes. Some recipes will tell you to use the orange juice as well, but I think this makes the finished drink too acidic. Pour two bottles (or more) of cheap red wine into a large pot and heat until warm but not too hot to drink.  Add the spiced syrup to taste.

There are many variations on mulled wine. In Sweden, they add raisins and almonds for something called Glogg (This is served every year as part of Brent & Josh’s Boxing Day Raclette), which is sometimes also spiked with brandy or vodka. Don’t let me stop you. It is one of the traditional drinks for the feast of Saint Lucia, when young Swedish girls dressed all in white and wearing a crown of burning candles serve coffee and special saffron flavored buns to their families in the pre-dawn hours (which in a Swedish December ain’t necessarily all that early). But once everyone is caffeinated, why not add some hot wine, especially to celebrate the fact that nobody’s hair went up in fames.

The Basic Hot Toddy Recipe

Hot Toddy is another drink that was invented to redeem the undrinkable. In this case it involves diluting, heating and sweetening distilled spirits. Originally made with Scotch, I like it better made with Bourbon or Irish whiskey (and you could use brandy or rum, too) but as with mulled wine, don’t use the good stuff. The simplest way to make it is to pour a healthy shot of whisky into a mug, add some sugar, a clove and a stick of cinnamon, fill the rest of the mug with hot water and garnish with a slice of lemon. However, you may get a more flavorful result if you make syrup as described above, mix equal proportions of that with your liquor of choice and then add the hot water. And since whisky is not acidic (as wine is) you may well want to add a good squeeze of lemon. Tradition has it that this drink is an excellent cure for the common cold. In fact, it will probably make your cold worse because it has a dehydrating effect, but you won’t realize it until the next day, when you can have another.

The Basic Hot Buttered Rum Recipe

Then there is hot buttered rum. Cream together some unsalted butter, sugar and other flavors of your choosing (ground cinnamon, clove, nutmeg,lemon zest, etc) and then chill the mixture. For each drink, scoop some of the sweetened and flavored butter into a mug, add some rum and fill the mug with hot water. As you can imagine the butter melts into the rum for a highly aromatic drink. However, the fat also floats to the top forming greasy globules. Oh, it must have been something when made with authentically rancid Victorian butter and it just goes to show that they would drink anything back in the days of roast goose and fyggie pudding.  There are some more palatable modern recipes that use vanilla ice cream instead if butter, but that’s not exactly “buttered”, is it?

The Basic Irish Coffee Recipe

Or you could make yourself a nice Irish coffee, probably the best of all hot cocktails. Pour a shot of Irish whiskey into a mug. Add some sugar, if you want it. Fill the mug most of the way with freshly brewed, strong coffee and top with cream that has been whipped to the point of starting to thicken but no farther. You may want to pour the cream onto the coffee over the back of a spoon to make sure it floats. And do not top it off with a drizzle of crème de Menthe or a Marischino cherry or any other such green and red horrors just because it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I would add a ‘Bah, Humbug’ were I not feeling so warm and cozy from practicing all of these recipes.  Everyone at Beekma 1802 hopes you enjoy a “cup of good cheer”.