Mulled wine in a pub: what a glass costs, what to charge for 70% GP, and how to stop the urn wrecking your stocktake

A 10-litre box of ready-made Glühwein costs £61.39 before VAT from a free-trade wholesaler. That's 57 glasses of 175ml at about £1.07 each, so at £5 a glass you're making 74% GP before anything goes wrong. Mulling your own from a cheap 12% red costs more, about £1.40 a glass for the wine alone, because full-strength wine pays more than double the duty. And the thing that wrecks mulled wine margins usually isn't the price. It's the urn: what boils off, what's tipped at close, and the fact that nobody counts it.

Mulled wine comes round every year and most of us price it by looking at what the place down the road charges. That's fine as a starting point. But it's a drink you heat for hours and pour from a ladle, and that's two ways for the stocktake to go quietly wrong. Here's the cost, the price for the GP you want, and how I'd keep it honest from now to January.

What a glass costs you

All prices are Inn Express's published ex-VAT web prices, checked on 14 October 2026. I've included the mulled cider because plenty of pubs run both.

Option	Price ex VAT	ABV	Cost per 125ml	Cost per 175ml	Duty in a 175ml glass
Hitzkopf Classic Glühwein, 10L box	£61.39	5.5%	77p	£1.07	26p
Dunkertons Mulled Cider, 10L box	£41.00	4%	51p	72p	7p
Penasol Tempranillo 75cl, mulled yourself (wine only)	£5.99	12%	£1.00	£1.40	64p

My arithmetic from the published prices. Duty is worked from the GOV.UK rates from 1 February 2026: wine from 3.5% to 8.4% pays £26.61 per litre of pure alcohol, wine from 8.5% to 22% pays £30.62, still cider from 3.5% to 8.4% pays £10.39. A 10-litre box doesn't get draught relief, which needs a container of 20 litres or more connected to a pump or gas tap.

That duty column explains most of the gap. A 5.5% Glühwein is roughly half the strength of a table red, so it carries less than half the duty. Mulling your own from a 12% wine means paying full wine duty on every drop, then adding orange, sugar and spice on top. Stretch it with juice and the cost per glass comes down, but so does what's in the glass, and you've paid for the labour of making it.

What to charge

Here's the price, VAT included, that gets each one to 65% and 70% gross profit, and the GP you'd make at £4.50 and £5 a glass:

175ml glass	Price for 65% GP	Price for 70% GP	GP at £4.50	GP at £5.00
Glühwein, 10L box	£3.68	£4.30	71.4%	74.2%
Mulled cider, 10L box	£2.46	£2.87	80.9%	82.8%
Your own, from a £5.99 red	£4.79	£5.59	62.7%	66.5%

My arithmetic, GP on the ex-VAT price, before any waste, and the homemade row counts the wine only. On paper the boxed Glühwein at £5 is one of the best-margin drinks on the bar. Mulled cider at the same price is better still, but most people expect to pay less for cider, so price it where your own cider sits.

There's no published average for what UK pubs charge for mulled wine, so I'm not going to invent one. Look at your own wine-by-the-glass prices. Mulled wine sits naturally just under a 175ml of your house red. My wine by the glass guide has the sums for those.

The urn is where the margin goes

Mulled wine is held hot for hours. Some of it evaporates, the last litre at close gets tipped because it's stewed, and the ladle doesn't care whether it's pouring 150ml or 200ml. None of that shows on the till.

Say a tenth of every box never reaches a customer. Your Glühwein then costs £1.19 a glass, not £1.07, and the 74% at £5 becomes 71%. Annoying, not a disaster. The real damage is when nobody records it, because at the end of the period your wine line is down a few litres and somebody starts wondering where it went. That's a non-question if the tipped urn went in a wastage log the night it happened. My wastage log guide has what to write down.

Three things that keep it tight:

• Measure the serve. Pour into a marked glass or use a ladle that holds a known amount. Check it against a measuring jug once at the start of the season.
• Heat what you'll sell. Fill the urn for the session you've got, not the whole box. You can always top up. You can't un-stew it.
• Log the end of the urn. What's tipped, in litres, every time. Ten seconds.

Counting it at stocktake

Mulled wine is easy to forget on the count because it doesn't live where the rest of the stock lives. Set it up as its own product so it doesn't get lumped in with house red.

Unopened boxes count as each. An open box is easiest weighed: wine weighs close to a kilo a litre, so weigh it full on the day it arrives, then weigh whatever's left on count day and the difference is what's gone. What's in the urn on count night counts too, roughly, by the litre marks on the side. If you mull your own, count the bottles of red you've set aside for it separately, or you'll have a wine variance in January that's really a mulled wine one.

If you're using StockTap, add it as a product with its own size and cost price and count it in whichever way fits, with the urn logged as wastage. Same principle on paper.

Measures and the law

Still wine sold by the glass has to be in 125ml or 175ml, or multiples, but that rule doesn't apply when it's mixed with another drink, and you have to offer the small measure. A mulled wine you make with juice or brandy is a mixed drink. A ready-made Glühwein poured straight from the box is the grey area. I'd serve it in 125ml and 175ml anyway, which keeps you safe and makes the costing simple. My measures law guide has the detail, and your local trading standards team can give you a firm answer for your own serve.

If you're planning a Christmas market or an outside bar, a temporary event notice may be needed. My TEN guide has this year's deadlines.

My take

Boxed mulled wine is cheap to buy, easy to serve and makes a better margin than most of the bar. The way to lose that is to treat it as a seasonal bit of fun that sits outside the stocktake. Price it off your house red, measure the serve, log what you tip, and give it its own line on the count. Do that and in January it's a profit line. Don't, and it's a wine variance with a cinnamon stick in it.

The rest of the season's stock planning is in my Christmas and New Year stock guide.

Common questions

How much does mulled wine cost a pub per glass?

A 10-litre box of ready-made Glühwein at 5.5% costs £61.39 before VAT from a free-trade wholesaler in October 2026, about £1.07 per 175ml glass or 77p per 125ml. Mulling a £5.99 bottle of 12% red yourself costs about £1.40 per 175ml for the wine alone, before fruit, sugar and spice.

What should a pub charge for mulled wine?

At £1.07 a glass, a 175ml boxed Glühwein needs about £3.68 including VAT for 65% gross profit and £4.30 for 70%. At £5 it makes about 74%. There's no published UK average for mulled wine, so most pubs price it just under their 175ml house red.

Is there less duty on mulled wine?

On a lower-strength ready-made one, yes. Wine between 3.5% and 8.4% pays £26.61 per litre of pure alcohol from 1 February 2026, about 26p in a 175ml glass at 5.5%. A 12% table red pays £30.62 per litre of alcohol, about 64p a glass.

How do you count mulled wine in a stocktake?

Give it its own product line. Count unopened boxes as each, weigh the open box (wine is close to a kilo a litre), estimate what's left in the urn by its litre marks, and log anything tipped at close as wastage so the shortfall is explained.