Waaaassssss-aaaaaail.

Every December, the Advent seasons marks the beginning of the Christian holiday season. On each Sunday for four weeks before Christmas, one of four candles is lit as a symbol of the anticipation of Christ's birth. It is a time of reflection and penance. In Europe, especially in Sweden the Advent season stretches beyond the New Year until January 13, also known as Knut's Day. During these weeks, as families prepare for their celebrations, a traditional Scandinavian spiced drink of mulled wine is served with an assortment of gingerbread and cinnamon coated confections. It has been a tradition since the 1600s. "On Sunday evenings during the Advent we have glogg parties," recalls Jim Palmeklev, sommelier at Aquavit. "A few friends come over, we talk about life, eat gingerbread cookies and saffron buns, and sip glogg." Though not raucous occasions, glogg parties epitomize the celebratory nature of winter.

Much like eggnog, mulled wine recipes are part of our winter vocabulary. Glogg, gluhwein, poker beer, bishop, toddy, hot punch, flip, rumfustian, and wassail are all of the warmed spirit family. Glogg or gluhwein meaning "glow wine" is a spiced wine prepared in Germany. Poker beer is literally, beer heated with a hot poker known as a loggerhead. A bishop is made from port, sugar, spices, and an orange studded with cloves, a favorite of young English scholars. Waes hail or wassail was an Old English toast meaning 'may you be healthy' (Dunkling 36). The proper response: drinc hail or 'drink good health' was often the reply as huge pints of warm wine or ale perfumed with cinnamon and cloves collided in mid air. Today, these mulled spirits are much a part of the holiday tradition in Great Britain and mainland Europe. The practice of mulling, or simmering spirits with spices and citrusrinds, can be traced back to 54 BC Rome when wine making included the addition of salt, water, myrtle, juniper, or honey rose petal s, and citron; further spiced with wormwood (Kiple & Ornelas 1218). It was a Benedictine tradition in 1000 AD at the Cluny abbey in Burgundy to break with their rather austere diet of grains and vegetables once a year on the feast day of their patron saint (Flandrin and Montanari 261). To celebrate, a banquet of a wide variety of dishes including meat, a rarity for those of the Benedictine order, were enjoyed along with pigmentum or hippocras, a mulled wine prepared with cinnamon, honey, and pepper. It has been postulated that spices and honey were added to a pot of warming wine in the Middle Ages to mask its less desirable qualities. Medieval ideology put great faith in the healing and restorative properties of the distillation process. Monks, who had a long tradition of herbal remedies, combined the distillation process with spices and honey to produce warm, flavorful elixirs. Benedictine and Chartreuse orders still consume these restoratives for digestive and muscular problems (Barr 200). In the early 1400 s, when pastry makers in Paris formed their own guilds, their repertoire of dishes extended beyond savory pies and meat tarts to milk and egg enriched sweet pastries. By the 1500s, the mulled beverages became so popular that master pastry chefs were required to produce these confections, which were made to accompany the popular spiced wine aperitif of hypocras (Flandrin and Montanari 282).

Mulled beverages are also not exclusive to wine. Many recipes for mulled ale, brandy, or port can be found in antiquated recipe books. In the 1600s as English settlers ventured to India, they encountered a beverage called panch, meaning five--the number of ingredients used. Paunch was a chilled blend of arrack, a distilled palm sap, with sugar, citrus, water and spices (Barr 44). The beverage soon caught on in Europe where it was pronounced "punch." Eventually rum and brandy became interchangeable with the use of arrack. A sling punch, as it was known when poured over ice, included a mix of rum, water, sugar, lemon, and spices. However, when ordered as a warm drink in the winter this same sweetened rum punch was known as a "toddy." Though the British enjoyed sipping their rich Madeira after dinner, the fortified wine was transformed into a thirst quencher when mixed with cold water, sugar, nutmeg, and other exotic spices, known as a sangaree. Flip was a wintry cocktail made popular in the 1700s; it was a comb ination of rum, beer, cream, egg, and spices that was stirred with a hot poker, causing it to foam, and caramelize the sugars .The list goes on, and though there are many variations of glogg, mulled wine and the like, all recipes include a combination of wine, fortified wine, sugar, and spices. Occasionally an orange slice or a distilled spirit like vodka will be added.

RELATED ARTICLE: The following glogg recipe is compliments of Sommelier Jim Palmeklev of restaurant Aquavit.

GLOGG

(Serves 6)

For the glogg:

1/2 teaspoon crushed cardamom 

2 cinnamon sticks, crushed

1/2 cup vodka

1 bottle dry red wine

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon granulated vanilla sugar

1/2 cup blanched almonds

For the garnish:

Blanched almonds

Raisins

For the glogg, in a spice grinder, combine the cardamom and cinnamon and pulse to a rough powder. Transfer to a medium glass jar and add the vodka. Tightly seal the jar and set aside at room temperature for 24 hours. Strain the vodka through a coffee filter-lined, fine mesh sieve and discard the spices. In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, bring the vodka and the remaining ingredients to a simmer. Maintain the heat until the sugar is dissolved and the glogg is warmed through. Remove from the heat and pour the glogg into demitasse glasses. Garnish with almonds and raisins.