Leelanau Cellars Witches Brew

When we lived in the Philly area, Sonia and I attended this Christmas village they do right in Love Park in Center City. It was a very cold evening and there were even a few snowflakes in the air. Enchanted by the beauty of the lights and Yuletide decorations, the beautiful wifey decided to embrace the moment by sampling one of the vendors' mulled wine beverages.

Within minutes, her pulse began racing and she became very short of breath. She had to sit down and relax immediately and just narrowly avoided fainting. We might have assumed they dropped some kind of drug into her drink if not for the fact I finished the rest with no noticeable side effects.

With my help, she managed to make it back to the SEPTA train and returned to normal within a couple hours of reaching our apartment. To the best of my knowledge, mulled wine is simply red wine infused with a few spices and served hot, but to this day Sonia has avoided it due to that odd reaction.

All that to say I'll be scoring this one alone. The beautiful wifey will be enjoying a nice vanilla blonde ale while I sip on this sweet spiced red. And yes, it is quite sweet. There's even a sweet-o-meter on the back of the bottle indicating that this brew gets a 4 out of 5 sweetness score. I'd say that's about right.

It's basically a fruity dessert red with a warm blend of fall spices. From a distance, it looks like a dark opaque red color, but in the light it looks like a slightly translucent shade of light purple. The particular ingredients aren't listed so I'm merely guessing at the spices here, but I'd say I taste clove, allspice, nutmeg, and maybe a hint of cinnamon and ginger. It's still more sweet than spicy in my book, but it's definitely packing more than just grapey goodness.

I tried it hot but I honestly prefer it at room temperature. I didn't feel the need to add a cinnamon stick or anything like that, but if that's your thing, have at it. I haven't tried it chilled or on ice yet either, but I bet it would taste a good bit like sangria, particularly if you tossed some fresh fruit into your glass.

$7.99 for the screw cap bottle. 12.5% alcohol by volume. Would buy again. I'll go with seven and a half out of ten for Leelanau Cellars Witches Brew.

Bottom line: 7.5 out of 10.