Mid-December, I came across this video. (Hint for Anglophiles: the English Heritage videos are all worth watching!)
As one can't English get ginger wine in the shops here (which is more of a sort of liqueur) and there was'n enough time to get it via Amazon (and frankly, I was pre-Christmas broke), I got a decent white wine and soaked thin slices of fresh Ginger in it for a week in tightly closed glasses in the fridge. I was aware that this wouldn't be close to a substitute for genuine ginger wine, but it had to do.)
The ingredients were meant for a huge bowl, so I broke it down to a much smaller portion, suitable for two.
250g Brown Sugar (85g)
7 lemons (2,5)
750ml Gin (250ml)
750ml Ginger Wine (250ml)
250g Honey (85g)
A Pinch of Cloves
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Nutmeg
Hot Water
When it came to the spices I realized that buying them individually would be prohibitively expensive and got a mixture of German Lebkuchen spices instead which contains cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and apart from that nothing which would do any harm to the brew, such as allspice, coriander, ginger, fennel, mace and caraway.
The first portion was too sweet, too watery, not hot and not quite spicy enough, so I reduced honey and sugar, put in more gin and spice, heated mixture and bowl gently first and used boiling instead of hot water.
It was a treat!
With it went the, in some regions of Germany, traditional Christmas Eve dish "Würstchen ("Bockwurst" or "Wiener") und Kartoffelsalat". I gave it a little bit more pizzazz by using Berner Würstchen (Bernese Sausages, i.e. "Wiener" wrapped in very thin slices of bacon) and maybe I'll post my very special, heavenly potato salad recipe later. (I did!)
All in all, it was a great success.
Btw, the bowl is the soup bowl from KPM Berlin, "Rocaille" with handpainted flowers, as is the rest of the dinnerware.
