New years Mulled Wine

The consumption of alcohol on the eve of the new year is a proud, if occasionally disastrous, tradition. Who are we to shun it?
We rang in 2012 with a bottle of some less than stellar white wine purchased at a severely unwelcoming liquor shop moments before it closed, so let's go out with a bit more style this time!
A bit of cross-promotion here, you can take a look at what recipe (or, uh "recipe") we used and the cooking process here, at my Mother's Squidoo article. Doing so might earn her a bit of pocket change, so get to it!

And how does it taste?
Well, neither of the wines that we used were particularly spectacular on their own, but they combine nicely. The dry red cuts the sugar and port well, while the spices round out the flavour and the lemon adds a pleasant kick. The flavours are all very intense and upfront, not a subtle drink in any sense.
That doesn't, surprisingly, extend to its alcoholic qualities. For the sheer amount of liquor in this, I had expected more of a punch and... it's actually pretty mellow in that respect!

Much better warm than when it gets to room-temperature, though. Ech.

A happy new year to you all, and I hope you continue to drink vicariously through us for another one!

Sperone Cremevo Marsala Wine Beverage.

It's nice. The texture is smooth and lightly syrupy in an appealing golden red colour. It's sweet, but not tooth-breakingly sugary. A bit of fruit, a bit of vanilla, not bad at all. At fourteen dollars Canadian, I'd recommend it as fulfilling dessert drink on a budget.
 That's not what I want to talk about.

You know what I want to talk about?

I want to talk about how the ingredients list includes frozen egg yolk.

Let's talk about that.



The ingredients list also includes "alcohol". Woah guys let's not go overboard with the florid descriptions here.

Naked Grape Chardonnay Wine Spritzer

Elephant & Castle

$5.85

Checking out Elephant & Castle's short list of less expensive drinks, I decided to try out a wine spritzer.  I've had wine coolers before, but not spritzers, so I wanted to see what difference there was.

I admit to not expecting much.  Spindle and I have tried both a red and a white Chardonnay before and it's not something we're fond of.  So I wasn't expecting to be blown away or anything.

The spritzer itself is 4.5% alcohol.  It has a nice, fruity smell and a lovely sparkle to it.  It came with a big glass of ice and slices of lemon and lime and looks rather pretty.

The flavour?

Well, I haven't been suddenly converted to enjoying Chardonnay.  I'm afraid "okay" is about the best I can give it.  It wasn't bad, by any means.  Just... meh.  Unless you already like a Chardonnay, don't bother.  If you do, it'll probably be quite grand.

Casal Domingo Light Wine Cooler

Casal Domingo

Light wine cooler

Wild Harvest Berry

"low alcohol wine beverage" .5% alcohol

Spindle asked me to write this review, what with my prior experience with wine coolers and all.  Uhm... sure.  *scratches head*

I actually remember when vodka and wine coolers first came out on the market.  How's that for dating myself? I did like the vodka coolers, but having turned my nose up at imbibing long ago (nothing like watching one's peers stagger around, pants falling off, then puking behind a bush to turn one off of alcohol), I never really got into them. 

That was 20 odd years ago.

I didn't start trying out different alcoholic drinks until Spindle turned 18 and expressed a curiosity in trying out different types of booze.  Why not? sez I! 

I still don't particularly like alcohol.

When she suggested the wine cooler to try, however, I remembered the coolers I'd had long ago and rather liked the idea.  Especially when we found the Wild Harvest Berry flavour.  Me like berries. 

This, however, has a low enough alcohol level to be sold in the grocery store (for those of you outside of Canada, Quebec is the only province where alcoholic drinks can be purchased in grocery stores.  We are not in Quebec). Which meant my younger daughter could try it out, too.

We all agreed that it had a very faint smell of berries.  I found it immediate; not so much the girls.  They also could smell the wine, which I couldn't.  It has a carbonated burn and bitterness to it.  My younger daughter felt it tasted a bit like berry yogurt - you know the type that has the berries on the bottom that need to be mixed in?  Like that, before mixing it in.  Personally, I felt the carbonation overpowered the berry flavours.  It reminded me a lot of a punch we like to make, using frozen berries and Ginger Ale, except using tonic water instead of the Ginger Ale.

Our conclusions?  Nice.  Mild flavour.  Very carbonated.  I liked it enough to finish off the bottle, which I usually leave to the kids.  I can see developing a taste for it.

Summer Garden Bowl

I (Spindle's mother) love Madame Benoit.  I first discovered her when I got her book, Madame Benoit Cooks at Home, as a promotional freebie.  I call it a book, rather than a cookbook, as it was filled with stories.  She wrote of growing up as a child in the early 1900's, of her time doing a cooking show, of her own family and, of course, tidbits of history and anecdotes connected with individual recipes.  It's a gold mind of information.  Over time I picked up The Canadiana Cookbook and all but one volume of her Library of Canadian Cooking, which turned out to be the English translation of the French version my mother-in-law has the original of.  It had been released a section at a time and, once complete, she had it bound into a single volume.

Madame Benoit  Cooks at Home remained my favourite.  Unfortunately, after many moves, my hardcover copy disappeared.  So I was thrilled to find the paperback copy at a recent library book sale.  If you get the opportunity, I recommend picking up a copy.

The following recipe is from this book.  She writes:

Summer Garden Bowl
So called because it was made as needed, with basil or marjoram or mint freshly cut in the garden, and it was served in a punch bowl set on a tray in a bed of herbs or wild flowers.

We decided to go with basil and picked up some fresh organic basil at the grocery store, my not having been able to do any herbs on our balcony this year.  Unfortunately, the next day, they had gone black and slimy.  So back to the grocery store we went.  The other basil didn't look to good, so we went with mint.

Here is the original recipe.

8-10 sprigs of basil, marjoram or mint
2 Tbsp (30 ml) sugar
1 bottle dry white wine
2 bottles rose wine of your choice
1 large bottle of soda water
3 limes or 2 lemons, thinly sliced

We decided to do a half recipe.

We're not big wine drinkers, so we weren't sure what to get.  We decided to go with wines from the same vintner.  They were only $10.99 a bottle.  I wasn't sure if I should consider that a good thing or not. *L*


The first step is to put the herbs and sugar in a punch bowl (we don't have one, so we used a salad bowl) and mash them together with your hands to release the oils.

Then a cup (or for our half recipes, 1/2 cup) of white wine is added and it's set aside for 1 hour.

After sitting for 1 hour, the rest of the wine is added.  We had tasted the white wine on its own (it's all right) and, with the half cup already out, there was little more than half a bottle left, so we used the whole thing.

This made up for the amount of rose we used up to give it a taste (better than the white).

 

At this point, it was getting late, so we were going to let it sit in the fridge overnight. When we found ourselves staying up late anyhow, we did end up trying it after 4 hours.

At which point, the soda water is added, the herbs removed (we used a small sieve to scoop them out) and the limes added.

 
To serve, ice the glasses (not the bowl) and fill with punch.

And there we are!

It is definitely a pretty little drink.  We could both smell the mint strongest, but I could also smell the lime a bit.  The smell of wine was pretty faint, competing with the soda water smell. 

For flavour, it went over well with my daughter.  She found it refreshing, not overly sweet, and it went down easy (as she shakes her glass with nothing but ice left to demonstrate).  None of the flavours overpowered the others, which she liked. 

Me, I'm not so sure.  I don't like soda water, so that didn't help much.  Still, it didn't overpower the other flavours.  The mint and lime went well with the wines, and the two types of wine mixed together worked out just fine. 

We both liked it, but not necessarily enough to make it again.  It's nice, but not really a drink that seems to warrant the length of time needed to make it.  It's just not interesting enough.  We'd order it in a restaurant, though.