#mulled-wine-flavors

#mulled-wine-flavors

Hands up, who is dry Januarying? While it's not something I do explicitly, I do like to cut back a bit at the beginning of the year. The marathon that is Christmas socialising can be fun but relentless, and I imagine there are many others in the same boat. When it comes to wine, at least, the problem with cutting back is what to do with the rest of the bottle.

The winter season in Germany can be notoriously brutal for foreigners and locals alike. We'd like to hear your tips for making the most of the colder months. Sometimes people who live in Germany joke that it's a great place to live for about six months of the year. But during the other six months? Cold weather, darkness and suffering.

One of my absolute favorite winter drinks is the après-ski classic verte chaud - also known as hot chocolate with a shot of emerald Green Chartreuse. This 300-year-old monastic liqueur is flavored with over 130 different botanicals, making it fabulously complex, with reviving notes of anise, mint, ginger, aromatic woods, pepper, tobacco, and lemon zest. It brings real lift to hot chocolate or dishes with earthy cocoa and creamy notes.

We gravitated towards the Blue Ball as teenagers, not because they served underage drinkers. They didn't. And we could only afford to drink lime and soda anyway. No, we loved this place because it had (drumroll) two bars. So we were not only cool enough to go down the pub (never to the pub, strictly down the pub or, better still, down the Blue), but we even had our own bar.