Glühwein and Coffee

I recently had dinner with some friends at Schnitzel Haus in SoMa where I ordered a glühwein. This wasn't a regular menu item, but I saw it written in marker on a sign by the washrooms. Remembering how much I enjoyed glühwein in München (Munich), I decided to get one.

Glühwein is a mulled wine traditionally drunk around the winter holidays in Germany. Other European countries have their own versions, including the well-known gløgg, or glögg widely drunk in Scandinavia. Glühwein is wine with added spices and sugar or honey, served hot. It is a great way to warm up on a cold winter day. I describe the use of the beverage as "an adult version of hot chocolate."

When my order of glühwein arrived, I didn't even recognize it as it came in two mugs. The servers told me that one of them was glühwein and the other is coffee. I was a bit confused, but I thought that perhaps I missed something and that it was tradition to drink glühwein with coffee. I decided this must be the case as the restaurant seemed very authentic. However, when I tasted the glühwein, I was very dismayed as it was room temperature! Perhaps I should have taken it as a bad sign when I ordered the glühwein, the servers didn't recognize what I was ordering until after I pointed to the sign.

Here is my theory of what happened:

The owner decided to offer glühwein on the menu and told the servers to serve it hot in a coffee mug. They must have misinterpreted this as "serve it with hot coffee" and did just that! This seems very plausible especially considering that is was obvious that our servers spoke English as a second language. If you can come up with a better explanation, I would love to hear it, but I was very amused by envisioning this scenario.