Up to 50 million liters of mulled wine are drunk every year during the Christmas season. Read here why it is better to fill your cups with organic mulled wine – and where you can buy it.
Mulled wine almost always consists of red wine, more rarely white wine, it is mixed with various spices and is sweetened to a greater or lesser extent depending on the manufacturer. For industrially produced mulled wines, mass-produced wines of inferior quality are often added to the mix. In order to conceal the lack of quality, extra strong sweetening is usually used.
Such inferior mulled wines are typically offered cheaply in large bottles or 1-liter beverage cartons in supermarkets and discounters.
Organic mulled wine or your own recipe
You get better quality if you make your own mulled wine at home or use organic mulled wine. In the case of organic mulled wines, the industrial sugar is usually replaced by raw cane sugar, honey or agave syrup and dosed much more cautiously. In principle, the further down the sugar is mentioned in the list of ingredients, the better. Because this mulled wine contains much less sugar and is therefore of higher quality.
As far as alcohol is concerned: the law stipulates a minimum alcohol content of seven percent, but many products contain up to twelve percent. That means almost 20 grams of pure alcohol in one cup. And the higher the sugar content, the faster the alcohol gets into the blood.
In addition to cinnamon, mulled wine also includes other spices, especially cloves and cardamom – preferably in organic quality. Because these are not irradiated, grown without chemical pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. Ideally, they even come from fair trade. In addition, organic manufacturers do without artificial flavors and other additives in ready-made spice mixtures.
For the benefit! But whose?
In addition to the typical (organic) spices, many mulled wine compositions also include juices, for example grape, apple, orange or elderberry juice. However, since the fruits used for industrial variants often come from huge monocultures (such as oranges from Brazil), they often also contain large amounts of residues such as insecticides, fungicides and growth regulators.
Mulled wine: Watch out, it gets spicy here!
Coumarin made headlines in 2005/06. The flavoring substance from cinnamon (cassia cinnamon) was found in cinnamon rolls and other foods containing cinnamon in a dose that far exceeded the permissible limit. Some alcohol-free mulled wines also contained quite high proportions. Coumarin can damage the liver and be harmful to young children – provided it is consumed regularly and in large amounts. But cinnamon is not just cinnamon: in contrast to cassia cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon contains hardly any coumarin.
If you prepare mulled wine yourself, it is better to use Ceylon cinnamon. However, since cassia cinnamon is cheaper, the industry often resorts to it. Which type of cinnamon the finished mulled wine mixture contains is usually not stated on the label. If you want to be on the safe side, you should check with the manufacturer of the organic mulled wine or the conventional product.
