This wasn’t the white Christmas most people were dreaming of. Mulled wine recipes tend to have a twist here and there – some people swear by cinnamon sticks, others argue vociferously that it needs orange peel. But, until now, most would agree that the wine in question is red.
Not this year, though. Thanks in part to our changing taste in wine, but also to the influence of German Christmas markets that have sprung up in dozens of UK towns and cities in recent years, retailers are hoping that white mulled wine will be this year’s big hit.
Maddie Love, a product developer at M&S Food, which is the first retailer to bring the drink to its UK stores, said she hoped that “its lighter, fruitier notes will appeal to those who prefer a more delicate flavour profile”.
Amber Gardner, one of London’s top sommeliers and wine buyers, thinks they might be on to something. “Across the whole sphere of wine, people are moving towards freshness and minerality,” she said.
“They don’t want to feel weighed down by heavy, oaky and often alcoholic reds – so they’re turning more and more to white wine. As we all know, mulled wine can err on the side of sickly and cloying, so I reckon mulled wine is overdue a nouvelle vague! I can see a white version doing really well in the coming years.”
While drinking spiced wine to keep out the winter chill dates back to the Roman Empire, it was the Victorians who turned it into part of the Christmas festivities. Though the drink’s creation goes back centuries, the idea of a white mulled wine is in some ways a very modern phenomenon.
The supermarket’s white mulled wines are inspired by the glühwein found at German and Austrian Christmas markets; Berlin’s Weihnachtsmärkte are particularly renowned for white glühwein and flavoured varieties.
European-style Christmas markets have grown sharply in popularity in recent years, introducing more Britons to glühwein. However, Gardner thinks the changing face of the British Christmas is open to more international influence in general.
“I do see that people are open to integrating other traditions into the baseline of the traditional British Christmas,’ she said. “Whether it’s from children who’ve lived in Asia or a grandchild having spent Christmas in Australia, families as a whole seem to be interested and excited to try new things and mix up the ‘holidays’. This really just seems to reflect the multicultural nature of the UK as a whole.”
Sommelier Honey Spencer runs the modern European restaurant Sune in Hackney, east London, with her husband and is author of the book Natural Wine, No Drama. Spencer thinks that our changing taste in wine is due to our changing diet toward plant-based dishes and ferments which work better with white wine.
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She also suggests that M&S’s innovation is an effort to keep wine on the table at the Christmas party. “I think this product development is more an attempt to keep consumers drinking alcohol in the first place rather than a reaction to changing tastes,” she said. “The one consistent change is that people are drinking less alcohol, especially young people. Although I would add that a skin-contact mulled wine might be a more intuitive and reactive product to introduce as this really is the category in wine that is experiencing growth.”
Skin-contact wine is also known as orange wine. The term refers to the amount of time when grape skins are in contact with the fruit juice during wine making. Sales of orange wine were up 99% this year in the UK.
“I do think Christmas drinks are a great opportunity for retailers and restaurants to capitalise on consumers’ increased appetite for alcohol and sugar. From October, we see a sharp rise in sales of sweet wines and after-dinner drinks which will naturally fall off again at the turn of the year.”
