British Winter Drinking: Wassail, Mulled Wine and the Hot Toddy

British winter drinking is older, odder and more ritualised than it first appears. Behind the pub fireside and the mug of mulled wine sit orchard ceremonies with pre-Christian roots, a punch that Dickens made famous, and a national conviction that hot whisky cures almost anything.

This guide covers the drinks, where they came from, and how to make them.

Wassail, the oldest tradition of all

Wassail is two things at once: a drink and a custom, and the custom came first.

The word comes from the Old English wæs hæl, meaning “be in good health”. By the medieval period it described the practice of carrying a bowl of spiced ale from house to house at midwinter, toasting the health of the household and expecting food or drink in return. Carol singing descends fairly directly from it.

In the cider counties of the West Country, wassailing took a different form and still does. On Twelfth Night, villagers process to the orchards, sing to the largest apple tree, pour cider on its roots, hang toast soaked in cider in its branches for the robins, and make as much noise as possible to drive off evil spirits. It is a fertility rite in all but name, and it has never really stopped.

Wassail

The drink itself: cloudy cider warmed with a baking apple roasted until soft, brown sugar, cinnamon, clove, fresh ginger and nutmeg. Thirty minutes, and the roasted apple is what separates it from ordinary mulled cider. Wassail

British Wassail

The older ale-based version, with dry cider, a splash of sherry or brandy, small roasted apples, brown sugar and ginger. Heavier and maltier, and closer to what would actually have been carried between houses. British Wassail

The hot toddy and the medicine cabinet

No drink is more British in reputation than the hot toddy, though the name probably came from India: taddy, the fermented palm sap drunk across the subcontinent, reached Britain through the East India Company.

What made it stick was the claim, never quite proven and never quite abandoned, that it cures a cold. Whisky, honey, lemon and hot water do genuinely soothe a sore throat, and the alcohol helps you sleep, which is roughly as much as any cold remedy achieves.

Hot Toddy

Scotch, honey, fresh lemon and hot water with a cinnamon stick and a few cloves. Eight minutes and no equipment beyond a kettle. Hot Toddy

Hot Whisky Mac

The other British hot whisky, and the faster one. Scotch and Stone’s ginger wine with hot water, three minutes, nothing else. The ginger wine supplies sweetness, spice and body from a single bottle, which is why it has survived since the nineteenth century. Hot Whisky Mac

The Dickens connection

British Christmas drinking owes a surprising amount to one novella. A Christmas Carol did not invent the English Christmas, but it fixed its imagery, and it ends with a drink.

Smoking Bishop

“A Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob,” Scrooge says in the final pages. It is a real drink: ruby port and red wine with oranges studded with cloves, roasted and left to steep overnight, sweetened with demerara and seasoned with allspice. Deeper and considerably less sweet than mulled wine, and worth the day of waiting. Smoking Bishop

Hot Gin Punch

Dickens used this one too, in The Pickwick Papers, where Mr Pickwick makes it. Gin and Madeira with lemon, diced pineapple, clove and nutmeg, gently warmed. Strange, fragrant and better than it sounds. Hot Gin Punch

Hogmanay and the Scottish New Year

Scotland treats New Year with more seriousness than Christmas, a habit dating from the Reformation, when Christmas was effectively suppressed for nearly four centuries.

Hogmanay brings its own customs: first-footing, where the first person across the threshold after midnight should ideally be a dark-haired man carrying whisky, coal and shortbread; and the sharing of a dram with everyone who arrives. The whisky is not mulled, spiced or warmed. It is poured neat and drunk standing up.

Where a warm drink does appear, it is usually a hot toddy, and the reason is practical: Hogmanay involves standing outside at midnight in Scotland in January.

The pub in December

The British contribution to festive drinking is less about invention than about setting. Mulled wine in Britain is essentially the continental drink, arriving with the Romans and well established by the medieval period as hippocras, heavily spiced and sweetened with honey.

What Britain added was the pub: a warm room, a fire, and a reason to stay in it. The seasonal drinks that fill it are mostly borrowed and comfortably naturalised.

Snowball Cocktail

Advocaat, lime and sparkling lemonade with a maraschino cherry. Dutch in origin, entirely British in its associations, and still the drink most likely to be requested by the oldest person at the table. Snowball Cocktail

Sidecar

Not a winter drink by design, but a fixture of the British Christmas drinks cabinet: cognac, Cointreau and lemon in a sugar-rimmed coupe. Sidecar

Mulled Wine

The version most British households actually make: red wine with orange, lemon, cinnamon, clove and bay, often lifted with brandy or port. Mulled Wine

Making a British winter menu

The pattern that works is one hot, one cold, one ceremonial.

A hot toddy or whisky mac for arrivals, because both are made in three to eight minutes. A snowball or sidecar for anyone who does not want a hot drink. And a bowl of wassail or smoking bishop as the centrepiece, both of which reward the day of preparation with a story to tell while ladling.

For the wider set, see the mulled drinks collection and the winter punches collection, or our guide to the history of mulled wine for how the whole tradition reached these islands.