I’ve been drinking glogg, a very potent mulled wine made with equal parts of heated red wine and aquavit, spiced with raisins, cloves, cinnamon sticks, almonds, cardamom, fire and sugar, every Christmas as far back as I can remember. Just to make sure you’re not drinking pure rocket fuel, you light it on fire in a saucepan and pour the flaming brew over a strainer full of cubed sugar, back into the pot, until the sugar is gone.
This burns off some alcohol, but really, not much. This recipe came from my Mom’s side of the family. It may be the booziest recipe of glogg (there are many) ever invented by Swedes or other Scandinavians trying to warm up after freezing their asses off ice fishing, herding reindeer, or just being out in the freakin’ snow too long.
My mom always fired up a batch every Christmas, because her mom always made it when she and my uncle Roger were growing up in Chicago. I’ve always associated it with delivering an always welcome pre-Christmas buzz (literally). In fact, glogg-centric parties have been my way of keeping these warm feelings alive with any friends brave enough to try it. To me, it’s really not Christmas without downing some glogg. The first sip offers a powerful vapor that snaps the head back. After that initial shock, the sips that follow go down smooth and easy. If anything can warm the cockles from the inside out, it’s this stuff.
But it wasn’t until a Thanksgiving a few years ago that my uncle Roger (my mom’s younger brother who I hadn’t seen since college) told of the time when he was a teenager (in the 40s) in Chicago with his two buddies. It was Christmas season and he and his pals went over to his house where his mom was hosting a small party and serving glogg. She asked the boys if they wanted to try some of this heated up Swedish Christmas drink. Uncle Roger was very familiar with it and knew caution was called for. He and one of the friends said they’d have a little. The other friend announced he couldn’t have any because he didn’t drink alcohol. And besides, he was due later that night to deliver a sermon at his church.
Now, I never met my grandmother, since she passed a year before I was born, but Uncle Roger hinted that she was a bit of a troublemaker. She ladled some of the raisins out of the saucepan of glogg and put them in a cup. Then she asked the young man if instead he’d like to try the raisins. Well sure, why not, he said, and started popping them down. Understand, raisins that have been drenched in glogg for a day or so, soak it up like a sponge. They lose their wrinkles and turn back into juicy grapes; and in this case, booze-infused grapes. This young fellow couldn’t get enough of the tasty glogg grapes. He downed several more supplied by my grandmother. After a time, Uncle Roger and the other friend suddenly realized they would have to drive this guy to his church sermon. He was too sloshed to get behind the wheel.
Outside, it was freezing cold and snowing hard. They made it to the church, but the young sermon-giver was very late. He got out of the car and peered through the blowing snow up a long set of steps leading to the church. He struggled up them, vaguely seeing a figure at the top of the stairs. Whoever it was seemed to be extremely angry.
As he finally made it to the top, he focused on the outline of his girlfriend, who screamed, “Where the blank have you been? Do you realize you’ve embarrassed me and the whole church is waiting for you? I’ve never been so humiliated!”
The staggering young man gathered himself at the top of the stairs and focused her face. “Oh yeah?” he snarled.
He punched her in the nose. Her blood flowed onto the new-fallen snow. She wailed in pain and horror, causing a crowd to rush out of the church. This incident caused such an uproar that the young man was shunned by his church. His already-won scholarship to seminary school was revoked. He was made an example to deter others from such irresponsible, drunken, brutish acts.
And to this day, it remains a mystery whether the above incident changed this young man’s life for better, or for worse. Only the glogg spirits know for sure.
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