Mulled Wine

Method

1. 1Put the cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise and lightly cracked cardamom pods into a dry pan over medium heat and stir them for about half a minute, until the smell lifts off the pan. Dry heat brings the aromatic oils to the surface of the bark and the pods, so they move into the wine faster and at a lower temperature. Pull the pan off while the spices are still pale — scorched cloves turn medicinal, and nothing later in the recipe takes that back.
2. 2Wash the orange and cut it into rounds about 5 mm thick, then drop them in with the spices. Pour in the wine, add the rock sugar and set the pan over low heat. You are heading for 70°C, which is a long way short of a simmer: steady steam off the surface, at most a few bubbles clinging to the rim. Ethanol boils at 78.3°C, so once bubbles rise in the middle of the pan you are driving off the part you paid for.
3. 3Cover the pan and drop the heat as low as your stove goes, then leave it 20 to 30 minutes. The spices need that long to give anything up, and the lid matters more than it looks; uncovered, a good share of the volume walks out as steam. Do not push past 45 minutes with the spices still in: cinnamon bark starts handing over tannin and bitterness instead of sweetness.
4. 4Strain into a second pot or a warmed jug through a fine sieve, and throw the spices and orange rounds away rather than returning them to the wine. Spent spices left sitting in hot liquid keep extracting, and by the second glass the bitterness shows. Taste here and add a little more rock sugar if the bottle turned out drier than expected.
5. 5Pour into thick-walled mugs, because thin glass loses the heat inside a minute. To keep a batch running through an evening, hold it between 60 and 70°C on the smallest burner or in a slow cooker set to warm; below 60°C it stops smelling of anything. Anyone who wants it stronger takes a 20 ml shot of dark rum in their own mug, off the heat, rather than into the pot.