Instructions

1. Pour a few tablespoons of wine in the skillet and scrape the sides of the pan with a wooden spoon to deglaze the pan. Skip this step if you don't need to deglaze a skillet. Instead, you can make the glaze in a saucepan.

2. Add the rest of the wine to the pan and stir in brown sugar or white sugar to taste. The total amount of wine and sugar should be about twice as much as the amount of glaze needed. It only takes about a tablespoon of sugar to break the bitterness of a dry wine, but you can add more if you want a more syrupy glaze. For example, if you want to make a glaze to cover a fruit cake, use as much as 2 cups of sugar for each cup of wine.

3. Bring the wine and sugar mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently to prevent the sugar from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

4. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the liquid reduces by about half. The amount of time required largely depends on the amount of liquid, with roughly three to five minutes needed for up to 1 cup of liquid. The water content evaporates as it simmers, so the mixture thickens to a glaze. If you want it even thicker, reduce it by up to three-quarters.