There is a particular evening, usually somewhere in the first fortnight of October, when the flat gets cold in a way a jumper no longer fixes. You could put the heating on. Or you could reach for a saucepan, a bottle of something red, and a fistful of spices, and fill the whole place with the smell of Christmases you half remember. Mulled wine has a terrible reputation, most of it earned. Made well, it is one of the great pleasures of the cold months. The gap between the two comes down to a handful of decisions, and almost all of them are easy.

Why most mulled wine is disappointing

Two mistakes account for nearly every bad glass. The first is the wine. The stuff that goes into most pots was barely drinkable to begin with, all harsh edges and stewed fruit, and no amount of cinnamon rescues it. The second is heat. Wine that is boiled turns bitter and thin, the alcohol flashes off, and you are left with hot, spiced disappointment.

Fix those two things and you are most of the way to something people will actually ask for a second cup of. Neither fix costs much. You do not need a special recipe handed down through generations. You need a decent bottle and a low flame.

The wine matters more than you think

Here is the counter-intuitive part. You should not mull your finest bottle. The spices and sugar will trample all over the nuance you paid for, so a Barolo in the pot is money set on fire. But the opposite instinct, reaching for the cheapest red on the shelf, is exactly what got mulled wine its bad name in the first place.

The sweet spot is a red that is juicy, fruit-forward and unoaked, with soft tannins and plenty of generosity. It wants to be a wine you would happily drink cold and unspiced, just not one you would agonise over. Grenache, or Garnacha as the Spanish have it, is the classic choice: all bramble and warmth and no hard corners. A young Côtes du Rhône does the job. So does a bright Beaujolais or a fruity Carignan.

Our house pick for the pot is the Atalaque Las Cárcavas Garnacha, old-vine fruit from Méntrida for the price of a decent lunch. It is all crushed raspberry and sun-warmed earth, the kind of red that takes to spice as though it were grown for it. Buy two bottles: one for the pot, one for quality control while you wait.

The spices, and the art of holding back

Mulled wine goes wrong when it tastes of the spice rack rather than the wine. Restraint is everything. You want warmth and perfume, not a mouthful of potpourri.

Start with whole spices, never ground, which turn the whole thing cloudy and gritty. A couple of cinnamon sticks, four or five cloves, a star anise if you like its liquorice note, and that is close to enough. Add the peel of an orange, pared with a vegetable peeler so you take the fragrant skin and leave the bitter white pith behind. A few coins of fresh ginger bring a gentle heat. If you want it Nordic, a bay leaf and a cardamom pod or two will nudge you towards glögg.

Sweeten with a light hand, and taste as you go. A spoonful of honey or a little caster sugar is usually plenty, because a good fruity red brings its own sweetness once it is warm.

The method: warm it, never boil it

This is the whole trick, and it takes ten minutes. Put your spices, citrus peel and sweetener in a saucepan with a small splash of the wine, and warm it gently until the sugar dissolves and the kitchen starts to smell like the season. Let that sit for a few minutes so the spices infuse into a little syrup.

Then pour in the rest of the bottle and bring it up to steaming, never simmering. You are aiming for the point just before it would bubble, somewhere around sixty degrees, and then you hold it there. No lid-rattling boil, ever. Give it fifteen or twenty minutes at that gentle heat and taste. Too sharp, a little more honey. Too sweet, a squeeze of the orange.

A measure of brandy stirred in at the end lifts the whole thing and steadies it for a long evening. A splash of orange liqueur does something similar, with more perfume. Ladle it into heatproof glasses or small cups, drop in a fresh slice of orange, and you are done.

One for the pot, one for the glass

The nicest way to spend a mulling evening is with two bottles open. One goes into the saucepan and becomes the warm, spiced thing everybody gathers around. The other you pour cool and unspiced, straight into a glass, so you have something bright to drink while you fuss over the pot.

For that second bottle, reach for something light and lively. A slightly chilled Dominio del Cuarzo Cinsault from Chile's Itata Valley is perfect: pale, red-fruited and made for a gentle chill. It is the antidote to a warm kitchen, and it keeps the cook honest.

For the curious

Grenache, the backbone of a good mulled wine, is a warm-climate grape grown across Spain, southern France and Sardinia. It ripens late and generously, which gives it high natural fruit, gentle tannins and a rounded, almost sweet warmth even when the wine is bone dry. That generosity is exactly what lets it stand up to cinnamon and orange without collapsing. In Méntrida, on the stony slopes south-west of Madrid, old bush vines lend it an extra note of dried herb and sun-warmed earth. Warm it with spice and it does not lose itself. It simply puts on a coat.

Made properly, mulled wine is not a nostalgia act or a Christmas-market cliché. It is a good, honest red given a little warmth and a little scent, shared with people you like, on the first evening cold enough to justify it.

Get the wine right, keep the flame low, and it will do the rest.