Julmust glögg
Oh My Glögg
The ancient Scandi holiday tradition of drinking glögg, or warm mulled wine, goes third-wave. If you buy something from an Eater link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics policy. Seasonal pomander balls — whole oranges studded with dried cloves — are hanging in the windows, making the whole place smell like hot punch.
Swedish Christmas food and drink
A heady, vinous, spicy scent with hints of cinnamon and ginger. You have arrived at the favorite Swedish wintertime, pre-Christmas exercise: a glöggmingel, a casual get-together where drinking glögg is the main event. Germans have their glühwein, Brits drink mulled wine, and the French keep warm with vin chaud, but the Swedes are probably the most enthusiastic drinkers of what we call glögg.
The warm, spiced wine has a rich history in cold Nordic countries. The founder of Sweden, King Gustav Vasa, is said to have gulped heated white wine sweetened with honey and sugar and spiced with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and ginger. Closing in on Christmas, every Swedish magazine, newspaper, food podcast, and television program publishes its own recommended glögg recipes.
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Shops stock specially designed punch bowls, pitchers, copper saucepans, and glass decanters to heat glögg and keep it warm. Sets of small cups, plates, and spoons, often passed down for generations in families, are dusted off each year during the winter season. In recent years, producers have gotten more and more creative, tweaking the main ingredients of glögg and adding nouveau flavorings, base alcohols, and other third-wave riffs.
The traditional spices — cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, and orange peel — have been joined by flavors like meadowsweet, lingonberries, vanilla, cloudberries, cherry, saffron, chocolate, marzipan, and even tiramisu. The modern glögg trend has even moved beyond drinks, with recipes circulating for glögg-flavored cheesecakes, sourdough breads, and glögg-spiked hot pot. Large volumes of glögg can now be bought ready-made across Sweden in bottles, bags in boxes, and cans, particularly at the retail alcohol monopoly Systembolaget.
Here in the U. The Swedish chain stocks more than 90 different glögg varieties and reportedly sells nearly 3 million liters of glögg per year. But micro distilleries have gotten in on the glögg game too, sold in big-city shoppy shops and direct from small-scale makers across Sweden. Stockholm Bränneri , located in an old Jaguar repair shop, makes a version that infuses apple wine with raspberries, aronia berries, and pomace from the Gothenburg city winery Wine Mechanics.
The infusion is fortified with housemade dry gin and blended with a bunch of traditional Christmas spices. In the nonalcoholic version, which is based on black currant juice, the gin is replaced by juniper berries, and the bitters by rowan berries, lingonberries, and wormwood. On the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, Elisabeth Hellström of the tiny Hellström gin company makes one of the best gin-based glöggs on the market.
She uses a base of Swedish organic apple cider infused with blackcurrant, sloe berries, Christmas spices, and her own gin. She loves to serve the glögg with a stick of cinnamon and a slice of apple. The brand combines cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon with fresh seaborn and even jalapeno, which lends a lingering, warm aftertaste. To start, cut dried figs and ginger into pieces and macerate in vodka with traditional glögg spices cloves, etc.
Then, heat up the vodka and set it on fire with a match. Suspend a large sugar cube over the pan and carefully spoon the burning vodka over the sugar so it slowly melts and pours down into the pan. The liquid should become lightly golden in color and smell irresistibly of caramel. Snuff out the fire with the pan lid and serve immediately in small glass cups, each garnished with raisins, blanched almonds, and a small spoon.
Trevlig helg! Happy holidays!
Traditional Swedish Christmas Food
Per Styregård is an author and journalist living in Stockholm with his wife and son. Copy edited by Kelli Pate.
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