The Best Quick & Easy Instant Pot Mulled Wine

Imagine filling your entire home with the incredible, festive, and soul-warming aroma of warm, spiced mulled wine in a fraction of the traditional time. This amazing Instant Pot Mulled Wine recipe is your new secret weapon for creating the easiest, most flavorful, and most impressive holiday beverage you’ll ever make.

This isn’t just a recipe; it’s a complete game-changer for holiday entertaining. We’ll show you a brilliant Instant Pot hack that uses the magic of pressure cooking to create a deep, rich, and complex spice infusion in just three minutes! This fragrant, spiced cider is then combined with red wine, port, and fresh fruit, and held at the perfect serving temperature for hours. It’s the ultimate hands-off, stress-free, and crowd-pleasing drink for any fall or winter gathering.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Recipe Overview: The Ultimate Holiday Party Drink

What makes this Instant Pot Mulled Wine so spectacular is its incredible speed and its perfectly balanced, complex flavor. The real genius lies in the first step: pressure cooking the whole spices in apple cider. This technique extracts a depth of flavor that would normally take an hour of slow simmering on the stovetop. The final beverage is a perfect harmony of fruity red wine, rich port, and warm spices. Best of all, the Instant Pot’s “Keep Warm” function makes it the ideal, self-serve beverage for a party.

Metric	Time / Level
Total Time	30 minutes
Active Prep Time	10 minutes
Difficulty Level	Easy
Servings	10-12

The Essential Ingredients for the Best Mulled Wine

This recipe uses a handful of classic, high-impact ingredients to create its signature festive flavor.

• The Wines (Red Wine & Port):
  • Dry Red Wine: The base of our mulled wine. You want to choose a fruity, full-bodied, and inexpensive dry red wine. There’s no need to use a fancy, expensive bottle! Excellent choices include a Merlot, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, or a Grenache.
  • Tawny Port: This is our secret weapon for a rich, complex sweetness. Tawny port is a sweet, fortified wine that has been aged in barrels, giving it a beautiful amber color and delicious notes of caramel, nuts, and spice. It adds a wonderful depth and body to the mulled wine.
• Apple Cider: This provides a sweet, autumnal, and fruity base for our spice infusion.
• The Spices: It is crucial to use whole spices, not ground ones. Whole spices will infuse the liquid with a clean, clear flavor, whereas ground spices would make the finished wine cloudy and gritty.
  • Cinnamon Sticks, Whole Cloves, and Allspice Berries: This is the classic, warm, and aromatic trio for mulled beverages.
  • Black Peppercorns: A few whole black peppercorns add a very subtle, pleasant, and warming background spice.
• The Fresh Fruit (Clementines & Apples): Thinly sliced fresh clementines and apples are added at the end. They not only add a lovely, fresh fruit flavor to the wine but also make for a beautiful, edible garnish in each glass.

Step-by-Step to the Easiest Mulled Wine Ever

This recipe is wonderfully simple. Your Instant Pot does almost all the work for you!

Step 1: The 3-Minute Spice Infusion (Instant Pot Magic!)

In the stainless steel insert of your 6- or 8-quart Instant Pot®, add the 3 cups of apple cider, the 5 whole cloves, the 3 cinnamon sticks, the 1/2 teaspoon of whole allspice berries, and the 1/2 teaspoon of black peppercorns.

Follow the manufacturer’s guide for locking the lid and preparing to cook. Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook on high for 3 minutes.

Pro Tip: This is the game-changing step! The high pressure and temperature of the Instant Pot will extract all the delicious, aromatic flavor from the whole spices in just a few minutes.

Step 2: Strain the Spiced Cider

After the 3-minute pressure cook cycle is complete, carefully follow the manufacturer’s guide for a quick release of the pressure.

Once the pressure has been fully released, be careful of any remaining steam and unlock and remove the lid.

Carefully strain the hot, spiced cider through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl or a liquid measuring cup. Discard the whole spices, and then return the beautifully infused, fragrant cider to the Instant Pot.

Step 3: Warm the Wine and Fruit

Set the Instant Pot to the “Sauté” setting on high.

Add the two bottles of dry red wine, the 2 cups of tawny port, half of the sliced clementines, and half of the sliced apples to the pot with the infused cider.

Cover the pot with a glass lid (if you have one) and let the mixture cook until it is warmed all the way through, which should take about 5 minutes.

Crucial Pro Tip: It is very important that you do not let the wine come to a boil! Boiling the wine will cook off the alcohol. You are simply looking to heat the mixture until it is hot and steaming.

Step 4: Keep Warm and Serve

Turn off the “Sauté” function and set the pot to the “Keep Warm” setting. This will hold your mulled wine at the perfect, hot serving temperature for hours without it ever boiling.

Garnish the mulled wine in the pot with the remaining fresh clementine and apple slices.

To serve, simply ladle the hot mulled wine into heat-proof glasses or mugs, making sure each serving gets a few slices of the wine-soaked fruit.

Print

Storage and Make-Ahead Tips

This Instant Pot Mulled Wine is the perfect make-ahead beverage for a stress-free party.

• Make-Ahead: You can prepare the infused apple cider base (through Step 2) up to 3 days in advance. Let it cool completely and store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator. When your party starts, simply pour it back into the Instant Pot, add the wines and fruit, and heat it up on the “Sauté” setting.
• Storage: Store any leftover mulled wine in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
• Reheating: Reheat the mulled wine gently in a saucepan on the stovetop over low heat, or back in your Instant Pot on the low “Sauté” setting. Be careful not to let it boil.

For more recipe follow my Pinterest account

Creative Recipe Variations

This classic mulled wine recipe is a wonderful base for your own delicious and festive twists.

1. Add a Different Spirit: If you don’t have port, you can substitute it with 1 to 1 1/2 cups of another spirit, like a classic brandy, an apple brandy (Calvados), or even a dark or spiced rum.
2. Add a Star Anise: For a beautiful, warm, and fragrant licorice note that is a classic in many European mulled wine recipes, you can add 1 or 2 whole star anise to the pot with the other spices during the initial pressure-cooking infusion.
3. Make a Non-Alcoholic Mulled Cider: For a delicious, family-friendly version that everyone can enjoy, you can simply omit the red wine and the port. Instead, substitute them with an equal amount of a dark, unsweetened fruit juice, like cranberry juice or pomegranate juice, to create a beautiful, festive mulled cider.

Enjoy Your New Holiday Tradition!

You’ve just created the ultimate festive beverage that will make your home smell absolutely incredible and will delight all of your guests. This Instant Pot Mulled Wine is a perfect harmony of fruity, spicy, and warm flavors that is guaranteed to be a massive hit at any holiday party or cozy winter gathering. It’s a rewarding and deeply satisfying drink that is sure to become a new holiday tradition.

We hope you enjoy every last, warm, and delicious sip!

If you enjoyed making this recipe, please leave a comment below or share it with a friend who loves a good holiday drink!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)