Home of the Snarkmaiden

In comments betnoir asks about a recipe for glögg -- a traditional Swedish drink in the Yuletide. As I mentioned to her, easiest is to just buy a bottle of mix from Ikea -- or Cost Plus, for that matter. But doing it yourself is about equally trivial. It's just mulled wine. Here's approximately what I learned at my mother's knee.

1 jug cheap red plonk of your choice - burgundy or port, usually
2-4 sticks cinnamon
10-20 whole cloves
5-8 whole cardomom kernels
1 cup sugar
a handful of raisins
6 blanched almonds
1/2 each thinly sliced lemon, lime, and orange

Pour the wine in a large cookpot, add the sugar, spices, raisins, citrus, and nuts and heat until steaming, stirring periodically. Heat at steam point for 5-15 minutes to let spices steep. Serve in glass mugs.

As with most other Swedish recipes I know, there are oodles of variants. Googling, I see that lots of recipes include between a 1/4 cup to a full liter of plain vodka. Our family never added vodka, but depending on how much you want to put your guests on their butts, you can add that much vodka. Lots of the recipes I see use just citrus peel rather than whole slices, but I think the slices look pretty floating in the wine, and besides It's How My Mother Did It. You can vary the amount of sugar to taste, and can either steep the spices in vodka overnight and discard the spices and just use the vodka, or make a spiced simple sugar syrup and then add the wine, vodka, and fruit at the end. I see at least one recipe including a bit of ginger. And you can play with how many or few citrus types you use.

But the basic core is this: red wine, Christmas spices, raisins, sugar, and citrus, mixed together and heated 'til steaming. The rest is endless variation to suit your tastes and larder.