|
|
|
| Current Article | Previous Articles | Search Articles | Search Offers | Search Tasting Notes | Forum |
|
|
|
|
| Current Article | Previous Articles | Search Articles | Search Offers | Search Tasting Notes | Forum |
As I’ve said before and I’m sure a lot of you will have learnt to your cost, it’s easier to make cheap red wine taste reasonable, than it is to drag cheap white up to the level that doesn’t make you grimace. I think this is because white wine requires purity of flavours because there’s no tannin to hide behind. The tannin in red wine can hide some of the slightly offbeat flavours you might get from dodgy grapes and the lack of loving hand-making.
I think it’s also important to note that, because of the cost of packaging, transport, tax etc, the cost of the wine in a £4.99 bottle is probably double the value of wine in a £3.99 bottle and how Aldi manage to make any profit at all on wines at £3.29 I don’t know.
The Aldi wines did very well in the white wine tasting, a couple of weeks ago, but less well this week, only managing to nudge in at 5th position.
Our favourite wine was de Bortoli’s Cabernet/Merlot 2006, which is £4.99 or £3.99 if you buy as part of a mixed case of 6 at Oddbins. It smelt dark and, Alex thought, beefy. It tasted of blackcurrant and mint, with vanilla on the finish and was perfectly reasonable and certainly a good buy if you get 6 bottles.
First Flight Reserve Shiraz 2005 from Somerfield is £3.79. I kept the bottle and we had it with our supper the next day. It slipped down nicely, with a perfumed, pink soap smell and a very nicely minty taste. It had good balance and I’d definitely buy it for larger parties. The Co-op’s Lime Tree Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 is £4.49 and had an attractive blackcurrant and vanilla flavouring aroma, but with a whiff of alcohol. The taste was young fresh and with a little more tannin than the other “easy drinking” wines.
Sainsbury’s Bin 60 Cabernet/Shiraz 2004 is £??? And smelt of nearly burnt blackcurrant jam. It had a drier, almost pruney taste but was spoilt by high alcohol at 14.5%.
Aldi’s Bushland Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot 2005 is £3.79 and smell of Johnson’s Baby talc. The taste is pretty sweet and syrupy, but it does have some structure. Their Bushland Premium Shiraz 2005, which is £3.99 is lightly fruity on the nose with a sweet and fruity taste. If you have the will or the budget to buy 6, I’d spend my money on the de Bortoli from Oddbins, which is in a different league.
Aldi’s Badgers Creek Australian Red wine at £3.29 had a less than perfect smell and tasted a little tinny. Jindu, from Waitrose did very well with the whites, but their red smelt herbal in a disinfectant, Izal sort of way and the taste was burnt. Our least favourite was Bushland Reserve Shiraz from Aldi, which smelt pleasantly enough of cream and blackcurrant, but seemed too young and fruity to the point of being almost fizzy.