First you smell it, that smell of rich spices and citrus. Triggering your olfactory senses strongly stimulates your emotional connections, and those memories start flooding back. That Christmas market in a quaint little village in England, that ski trip in New Zealand, or maybe a crazy winter bonfire on a beach somewhere.

Expect to be filled with memories and warmth when you sample Smoking Bishop mulled wine at the Red Series on Saturday, July 29.

Mulled wine is warm spiced wine which was created by the Romans in the second century to defend their bodies against the winter cold.  As the Roman Empire spread, so did the idea of warm spiced wine. Each region may have added their own variation by using spices that were locally grown.  

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In many countries the name translates as “warm wine”, or “cooked wine”.  In Britain, mulled wine is traditionally called Smoking Bishop, where the name is said to have come from shape of the traditional bowl - shaped like a bishop’s mitre - from which the warm wine was served.

Pyrenees winemaker, Benjamin Baker, who adapted his grandmother’s heirloom recipe to make Smoking Bishop mulled wine syrup, said “It is about getting the perfect balance of delicious aromatic spices, such as cinnamon, star anise, cloves, fresh ginger, and citrus zest, and then adding the right amount of sweetness without it destroying those defining flavours and still allowing the robustness of the rich red wine shine through.”