Experts crown £3.49 bottle of supermarket red wine as best value Christmas booze

A cheap-as-chips bottle of red wine has been hailed as the best value booze for the festive season.

With Christmas hurtling towards us at an alarming rate, now is the time to stock up on your favourite festive tipples - or snag a few to give out as gifts.

But if you’re worried about overspending in the run up to 25 December, then fear not as Aldi has slashed the price of one of its bottles of red wine meaning it now costs just £3.49 a bottle.

Aldi's Specially Selected French Cairanne usually costs £8.99, but from 11 December its price is being cut more than half, meaning it’s under £3.50.

And if you’re concerned that the low price tag means you’re going to end up glugging a vino that tastes like vinegar - don’t be, because Aldi's Specially Selected French Cairanne is actually a hit with critics.

Jane MacQuitty, wine critic at The Times, said the budget-friendly booze was a ‘festive gift to the nation’ and ‘the bottle to buy’. You haven’t got to tell me twice, Jane.

Aldi

She wrote: “Savvy shoppers have always raced to Aldi for their weekly winter £3.49 specials, but of the dozen popping up this month and next, its tasty 2021 Specially Selected French Cairanne, a skilful blend of 60 per cent grenache, 25 percent syrah, 10 percent mourvedre and 5 percent carignan, is the bottle to buy.

“Recommended in my Summer Top 100 at its full £8.99 price, a few months of extra age have seen this Cairanne's silky tannins and warm thyme and pine sunny hillside scents and tastes develop into a more mature, excellent, earthy, cracked black pepper southern Rhône."

The cheaper price will run for one week from 11 December, so don’t hang around if you fancy snapping up a bargain.

Pexels/Nicole Michalou

The cut-price wine comes after Aldi announced a ‘Christmas price lock’ on the cost of Christmas dinner essentials, such as turkey crowns, pigs in blankets and Christmas puddings.

Richard Thornton, Communications Director at Aldi UK commented: “At Aldi we believe that everyone should get to enjoy an amazing Christmas, which is why we’re introducing the Aldi Christmas Price Lock. Our research shows cost is a major factor when it comes to choosing food options and by locking the prices of key staples at the level they were in 2022, it will help our customers up and down the country enjoy the Christmas dinner they deserve with the ones they love.”