The comforting drink — warmed and spiced wine
Würzwein du Rhin (spiced mulled wine with honey)
DrinkReconstruction🍯 🌶️facile25 min
Rhine wine gently heated, sweetened with honey, and infused with cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. The medieval ancestor of mulled wine, inherited from the hypocras of banquets.
Why this dish? Rhine wine accompanies all of Gutenberg's meals, the anchor says. Warmed and loaded with spices bought at the Frankfurt fair, it became the drink of winter evenings and the comfort of the printer bent over his lead forms by candlelight.
When night falls and fingers grow numb over the type, nothing beats a cup of warmed wine. I would take our good wine from the hillsides, warm it without ever letting it boil — God forbid we spoil its spirit! —, melt in a little honey and those precious spices brought back from the fair: cinnamon, ginger, a clove. The very scent warms the household. Drink a finger of it, friend, and the work seems less harsh.
Ingredients
- •Red or white Rhine wine — a pint (base)
- •Honey — two spoonfuls (sweetness)
- •Cinnamon — one stick (spice)
- •Dried ginger — a piece (spice)
- •Clove — two or three (spice)
How it was made : Spiced hot wine descends from medieval hypocras, a wine sweetened with honey and spiced, served at banquets in the late Middle Ages. The spices — cinnamon, ginger, clove, long pepper — came from the East via Venice and great fairs like Frankfurt's. They were also considered good for digestion and warming the body.