This includes gingerbread hearts, roasted almonds and hot spiced wine, but also handcrafted jewellery and leather bags.

BBC: Four great Christmas markets outside Germany

On the other side of the pond in Munich, travelers and locals alike look forward to the traditional crafts and hot spiced wine in the Marienplatz Christmas market.

CNN: Spectacular Christmas destinations

When the wine is hot, carefully set it aflame.

CNN: Short Ribs Braised in Red Wine

This popularity soon spread to the Far East, where it was noted the wine had improved immeasurably on its long, hot journey in cask.

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The cheap Salvadoran bodegas in Columbia Heights are also mixing with upmarket wine bars, such as Maple, where hot young things eat delicate servings of pasta on a reclaimed wood bar.

BBC: The new neighbourhoods of Washington DC

If you want to take some samples home to taste, canned snails are sold marinated in hot sauce or in Provencal style, with garlic, white wine and butter.

BBC: Learn to prepare snails in Provence

Those who want to lock in the hot-ticket 2003s should shop around, something Internet sites like Wine-Searcher.com have made almost ridiculously easy.

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All guests partake in mulled wine, an evening meal of cheese fondue, a hot whirlpool bath in the snow and sometimes a nighttime snowshoe trip.

BBC: Five European winter boltholes

By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hot walls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expence for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries.

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