Joer Mormont's hot spiced wine - A Song Of Ice And Fire (George R.R. Martin)

But if there is someone who knows what real cold is, it is definitely the Night's Watch. Yes, I'm talking about Jon Snow and all the knights who dedicate their lives to guarding the Wall, the immense fortification on the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms, essential to defend them from what lies beyond. And what lies beyond is danger (I'll try not to spoil anything if you haven't read all the books or watched the series) but also ice. Lots of it.

So, when the night gathers and his watch begins, what a man of the Night's Watch needs is something warm and spicy to stand the icy winds that blow through the corridors of Castle Black. Something like the hot spiced wine, prepared according to the recipe of Lord Commander Jeor Mormont, for example.

“The Old Bear was particular about his hot spiced wine.  So much cinnamon and so much nutmeg and so much honey, not a drop more.  Raisins and nuts and dried berries, but no lemon, that was the rankest sort of southron heresy… The drink must be hot to warm a man properly, the Lord Commander insisted, but the wine must never be allowed to come to a boil.” 

Over the history, so many types of spiced warm wine have been drunk in so many different places, for example it was popular in the Roman Empire, as attested in the Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder. The first recipes for spiced wine called "pimen" appeared at the end of the 13th century in the Tractatus de Modo and at the beginning of the 14th century in the Regiment de Sanitat of Arnaldus de Villa Nova. Nowadays it is mostly known as Hippocras, or "medieval spiced wine".

The fictional time depicted in A Song of Ice and Fire resembles a lot our late Middle Ages, especially giving how much inspiration has George R.R. Martin taken from the War of the Roses, dated between 1455 and 1488 - as he himself has stated multiple times. So to obtain something similar to what the Old Bear likes to drink in the books, we might as well follow an old recipe for hippocras.

The following method of making hippocras is taken from The Booke of Kervinge and Sewing (London: 1508), which in its turn is derived from recipes in fifteenth century sources such as John Russell's The Boke of Nurture, which contains a hippocras recipe in verse.

Take ginger, pepper, graines, canell, sinamon, sugar and tornsole, than looke ye have five or sixe bags for your ipocras to run in, and a pearch that your renners may ren on, than must ye have sixe peuter basins to stand under your bags, than look your spice be ready, and your ginger well pared or if it be beaten to pouder, than looke your stalkes of sinamon be well coloured and sweete: canell is not so gentle in operation, sinamon, is hotte and dry, graines of paradice be hot and moist, ginger, grains, long pepper ben hot and moist, sinamon, canell and redde wine colouring.

Now knowe yee the proportions of your ipocras, than beate your pouders, eache by them selfe, and put them in bladders and hange your bagges sure that no bagge tough other, but let each basinge touch other, let the first basin be of a gallon, and each of the other a pottell, than put in your basin a gallon of red Wine, put these to your pouders, and stire them well, than put them into the firste bage, and let it ren, than put them in the second bagge, than take a peece in your hand and assay if it be stronge of Ginger, and alay it with sinamon, and if it be strong of sinamon, alay it with sugar, and look ye let it ren through sixe renners, and your ipocras into a close Vessel and keep the receit, for it will serve for sewers, than serve your souvraign with wafers and ipocras.

Ok, maybe we can find an easier one.

Ingredients:

Red wine       750 ml

Honey          3/4 of a cup 

Water          3/4 of a cup 

Cinnamon       2 sticks

Nutmeg

Raisins

Pinenuts

Dry cramberries

Let the wine simmer over medium-low heat with the other ingredients, until steamy. Make sure that it never gets to a boil and strain it before you serve it. 

Let me know if you made your own version of a mulled wine this winter. In the meantime, take care, be safe and keep reading!