Love a mulled wine. Have tried various techniques to avoid it becoming "cooked wine", or - worse - boiling off too much alcohol, which defeats the purpose!
As with most things food-related, Serious Eats is the best starting place:
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-mull ... ter-review
Don't bother with pre-bought mixes. Waste of time and money. Think of all the christmas spices, add a few cardamoms and a good dose of coriander seeds for good measure and you're golden. Trick of course is to never boil... or if bringing to the boil to extract specific flavours from the spices or citrus, only do so with a small amount of the red wine. Then add the rest, bring up to 80C to steep and keep at/around that temp for 2-3 hours. Add your brandy at the end and, if using freshly squeezed OJ from the orange(s), I peel the oranges to get the zest, squeeze the hulls to get the juice and add each separately - hulls first, zest with about 30min to go and add freshly squeezed juice right at end so not to lose volatiles.
Normally red wine is plenty tannic enough, especially if buying cheapo. So be careful about adding too many orange hulls, which add an interesting, but noticeable bitterness. Definitely toast off the spices before adding - I also sometimes toast off some walnuts and add those as well. Prunes, dates etc. can be great when added after (but not before) any boil. Lovely to eat at the end!
]), but I also need people to fuck off early so I can get the kids down and build some toys, so a balance is required.
