Aldi wine

[stuart noble]

How come Aldi can do a drinkable bottle of wine for £2.99 when everyone else wants £3.99?

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , stuart noble writes

The bottle I bought for 4.99 last week (I tend to avoid the bargain basement stuff) was anything but drinkable. It was vile.

[David WE Roberts]

For various values of drinkable, of course. Working our way (slowly) through the Aldi wine selection but haven't found one to reorder yet. No big winners from Lidl either.

[Man at B&Q]

I haven't found one. Move up to =A33.59 and it's a *lot* better. Makes sense when you consider how much of that =A32.99 goes to the exchequer, how muct to the retailer and how much to buy the wine.

Do they? =A33.33 at Asda gets you some very drinkable plonk if you buy 3 bottles from the 3 for =A310 range.

MBQ

[polygonum]

The Lidl Australian Shiraz Cabernet is OK - but can't remember quite how expensive it is. £3-49? Or was that an offer? And, indeed, one of the Montepulcianos. Not write-home fantastic but at least as good for the money as anywhere else.

[R D S]

My top tip for enjoying wine is to first drink two glasses of it, after that it all tends to taste great.

[mogga]

This is uk.d-i-y so shouldn't you be talking about making it yourself?

I bought a load of demijohns for £5 from a carboot and got a bag of bits too - another bag of bits from OH's dad and I now have 4 demijohns of wine on the go. The strawberry kit one I made is mostly drunk now. I've got mint wine and blackcurrant on the go and the raspberry will be bottled soon.

And the guy who sold me the demijohns has promised me the rest he's got as they empty them! :)

[stuart noble]

I've never tasted a home brew wine that was any good, although those that brew it often wax lyrical about their produce.

[stuart noble]

Call me a peasant but I find the Baron St.Jean Rouge perfectly drinkable. Maybe I'll lay down a container load in the cellar.

I still don't understand how Aldi can sell any 12% wine for £2.99 and, having done so, why the big boys don't follow suit

[Tim Streater]

You'll have to expand on that a bit Steve. SWMBO tells me the grape is grown over a large part of Italy. What's the significance of the words Di Abruzzo? And what is vino nobile di Montepulciano?

Ta.

[Steve Firth]

Montepulciano, the real stuff, costs about £6 to £72 a bottle at the farm gate. If you are paying less than £6 in the UK then one wonders where it was produced and from what. The Montepulciano grape has DOCG status in Italy, the highest possible, and is jealously protected.

What I see sold in the UK labelled as Montepulciano (Di Abruzzo) is usually bottled in Forli not far from Ravenna. You may want to check a map sometime. It's rather like saying that something is genuine Champagne, bottled in San Tropez.

[PeterC]

On a larger scale: bought 1.5 li of cheap stuff in France; the third half-litre was pretty good!

[Huge]

^ |

This. I gave up with wine, even though I make excellent home brewed beer.

[polygonum]

Steve - no, what Lidl sell must be different, it says d'Abruzzo. :-)

Think it might be this one:

[Dave Liquorice]

Is he related to the Blue Nun?

Loss leader, get 'em through the door and they'll be tempted by the tool= s on special...

[The Natural Philosopher]

No that was von Tollbooth..

[djornsk]

I've had a play at winemaking from time to time, but my most successful attempt was my first at about 16 years of age. Following a recipe for an imitation Sauterne from rice and raisins, bakers yeast spread on a piece of toast was floated on the "stew" which then fermented in an earthenware pansion covered by muslin. The brew bubbled away for weeks behind the rocking chair in the kitchen, bottled, then enjoyed the following Christmas day. There was no bought wine available as a backup but non was needed because that wine was as fine as any I have tasted.

j

[tinnews]

But the percentage of alocohol has no effect on the duty paid, seems totally stupid to me but that's the way it is.

Same with beer, if it's "beer" it makes no difference if it's 2% or

12% alocohol it pays the same rate of duty. Hence there's absolutely no market for low (as opposed to zero) alcohol beers.

[Steve Firth]

Montepulciano D'Abruzzo (sorry still having problems knowing where to put apostrophes) is, by law, only grown in the state of Abruzzo. Even within the state vines that can use the apellation are restricted in geographic area. The DOCG area is principally Colline Terramane and it is one if the best wine growing regions in Italy. There is also a DOCG area around the city of Chieti.

It's claimed that the name "Montepulciano" was a mistake. A farmer bought some vines that he thought were Montepulciano nobile. They produced excellent wine and the stock was spread around the region. Later it turned out that the grape had no relationship to Montepulciano nobile which is grown some way to the north in Tuscany.

Montepulciano?

I hope the above goes some way to answer that. The Wikipedia page is accurate as far as I can tell. Except it seems a bit dismissive if the subtlety and variation in flavour of the wine. It is, on form, one of the world's great wines. Wines by Nicodemi and Valentini are astonishing.

[damduck-egg]

Fruit wines can be nice but it's verging on alcopop territory where under the flavour it could be a wine or a spirit based drink. m! :)

Gave up back in the 70's where the house my mates and I shared was probably too cold . A wine made with plums from a tree in the garden had gone too sleep so it was dosed with a drop of warm sugar before we went down the pubs curry house etc . Came home in the early hours and found the bulb had gone, actually it hadn't, the light was struggling to get through a layer of plum hanging around it and the new colour scheme on the walls and ceiling didn't reflect much of what did get out. Found the best solution to having copious quantities of beer available was getting a Job in a brewery.

G.Harman