Budget Supermarket Showdown: Aldi vs Lidl part 1

Intro

Aldi and Lidl – they’re quite similar aren’t they? Though only one of them (Lidl) smells like fish food. Both are budget supermarkets, both European, both have their own branded goods… and to that end, they each have their own [apparently] exclusive brands of alcohol. It makes you wonder; which is best?

I don’t mind telling you, I do most of my shopping at Aldi, and I definitely prefer the atmosphere in [most] Aldis to that of Lidl, though I rarely buy booze there. It doesn’t mean I haven’t. I started out drinking the 8 year old blended scotch, Highland Black as I’ve told you several times before. I’ve also tried the white and dark rum varieties of Old Hopking, the Vinelli vermouth, Oliver Cromwell gin, Tamova vodka, Ballycastle Irish Cream, Clarke’s bourbon… there’s more to try, but what I’ve tended to conclude over the years is that Aldi’s quality is all right – for the price…

But what about Lidl? It’s about time we found out isn’t it?

It would be nice to do direct comparisons and get this out of the way pretty quickly, but there are too many products to choose from, so I think it makes more sense to handle this on more of an ongoing, cumulative basis. Furthermore, there are a number of products that aren’t directly comparable.

I think what I’ll do then, for the time being, is alternate purchases between one and the other and attribute scores – either out of 10 or on some other maniacal, arbitrary scale that I make up as I go along.

Part 1

It’s time then, for part 1. After a very lean month, pay day made its merry way around and the Cakemeister decided he wanted to spend some money and headed out at lunchtime to the nearby Lidl. I think I was in part inspired by a new blog I found, Booze Review in which budget brands of alcohol are consumed and reviewed.

On arrival at the booze aisle, I can’t say I wasn’t tempted by the blended malt, but at £19.99 it was more than I’d planned to relinquish at that point. What I plumped for was the James Cook Premium 3 year old rum (£12.99, 40% ABV). My Mount GayEclipse was on the wane, and I’d been holding back on finishing it for some time, so the need seemed more pressing than for the other spirits, such as the brandy that was also calling me – I was after all, due a holiday in Spain in another month, so it seemed sensible to sort that one there. Being used to budget products being relatively low strength in the main, I figured that at 40% I couldn’t go wrong here.

James Cook has a hue… not unlike urine… in fact, very much so like urine. We won’t let that bother us though, we’ll just hope it isn’t representative of the quality of this particular spirit. The bottle is quite authentic looking, in that it doesn’t at first glance look total shit, though there is a clue in how it is non-specific about where its contents come from – just the Caribbean in general… and presumably blended in Germany.

I opened the bottle early one Saturday evening, and poured a generous measure into a glencairn glass to begin the nosing. I was immediately struck by how unusual the aroma was, light and citrusy. It all led me to expect that this might provide a taste experience more akin to a nice blended scotch than a cheap, bitey gold rum.

How wrong I was. I made some notes on my phone that reveal an accelerating realisation of horror – like in a film where they do that camera shot that zooms in on a face while the backdrop falls away…

It was like that scene in Peep Show where Mark goes jogging for the first time and his first impression of how easy it is rapidly evaporates as he tires and realises jogging is hard work, and what an idiot he was to have gotten the wrong idea a mere matter of seconds before.

Going to my notes, I see I have literally written:

“Weird, spicy, dirty… but not in a good way. Oh, it’s fucking awful. It burns. It’s making me feel a bit ill. I can’t drink it. It’s going in the sink…“

That is literally the first time ever I’ve felt that I have wasted my money on something that I’m not going to be able to drink. I’m serious, I will not be trying this neat again. By my third sip the taste was so offensive that I wouldn’t even try this with ice. I doubt you could even mix the evil out of it. I will try that, mind.

Usually bad spirits make decent hip flask fodder – or so previous experience had suggested… I can see now that there is an underclass of spirits that aren’t just bad, they are probably actually poison. Either that, or what I have thought of as hip flask fodder before aren’t actually bad… they just aren’t particularly good.

The Sauza tequila was pretty bad, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t knock back a few shots to get the party started. Instinctive reactions (and probably the gag reflex) would prevent me from even trying that with this. Any thoughts of sticking it in my hip flask for the following day’s Sounds From the Other City festival were quickly quashed by common sense. That would be a surefire way of taking a hip flask on a night out and still not getting hammered.

All I could think was that this might be a good thing to let friends try, just to demonstrate how bad alcohol can be. But I wouldn’t even subject them to it.

You might think I’m exaggerating a bit here, but I am serious: I have never tasted a spirit as bad as this – let alone one that made me feel ill after a couple of sips. I don’t know what that overbearing flavour is, but it is familiar, and it must be from nightmares. It brings to mind celery, but even celery isn’t as bad as all that.

A little searchy-search of the internets suggests that the dark variety of James Cook might not be all that bad, however they do say once bitten, twice shy¸  and therefore there is no way I am staking any of my wages against the quality of another product sold under the James Cook label. It just couldn’t possibly be worth it.

And for that reason I have to determine that Lidl have scored a massive own goal, such that the only way I can figure to give a score for this in my as yet unidentified scoring system is to give it a negative score. So minus 10 for you there, Lidl. I’ve actually been keeping a ranking system for all the various types of spirits, and James Cook is so bad that even though there are only 9 other rums on the list at this point, I have ranked it in 100^th place. And if I ever get around to ranking another 90 brands of rum, I’m confident this will still be a lot worse than the worst of them (I only rank based on full bottles experienced, not individual tastes – just so you know).

The good news is that I did go on to try this in a random summer cocktail that I made up, and it didn’t totally ruin it – but there were a lot of strong flavours in there; spiced rum, lemon juice, limoncello, orange juice and dry cider.

As time progressed, the James Cook just sat on top of the cupboard, going nowhere, doing nothing until one day I decided to pour it down the sink. I think there’s a bit of a gleam around the plughole now, though the cheap alcohol smell lingered for longer than I care to remember.

It may be some time before I risk any further Lidl purchases, but I suppose I have to if I’m going to maintain the integrity of this Aldi vs Lidl alcohol comparison. Until I do, let’s assign arbitrary scores out of 10 to the Aldi and Lidl products I’ve tried in the past with some useful notes.

Aldi Recap

Old Hopking White Rum – 6  - a sad 37.5% alcohol and only £10 at time of purchase. Nothing offensive about it that is going to ruin your cocktails. Should you buy it? You may as well.

Old Hopking Dark Rum – 7 – also 37.5% alcohol and sadly, I can’t remember how much it was the last time I bought it. Quality is consistent with its pigmentally challenged brother. In all fairness it is about on par with the Captain Morgan though the alcohol content is lacking.

Ballycastle Irish Cream – 7 – only 14.5% alcohol and a little thin, but if you like Irish Cream, there’s no reason you aren’t going to like this. When I last bought it it was a bargainous £3.99, though I think it has since risen to around £4.29.

Ballycastle Premium Irish Cream – 9 – ah, a budget Irish Cream that matches up to Bailey’s 17% alcohol. That’s more like it. Originally available at £5.99 (though subsequently at an increased cost of £6.49), this has a richness so close to that of Bailey’s that you’d be insane to pass it up.

Tamova vodka (blue) – 6 – an average “premium” supermarket vodka that at least has the decency to chalk up 40 ABVs.

Oliver Cromwell London Dry Gin – 4 – at 37.5% it’s suitable for mixing, but not worth writing more than 4 words about.

Vinelli Dry Vermouth – 6 – my introduction to the world of vermouth and as such I didn’t have anything to compare it to at the time – much less did I know what to do with it. Nonetheless, it’s decent enough.

Notable by their absence:

Highland Black 8 – one of the very first brands of scotch I ever bought and, as such impossible to comment on as I didn’t have anything to compare it to, nor any idea what scotch was even supposed to be like at the time. One day I’ll buy another bottle.

Clarke’s Bourbon – I mentioned that I’ve tried this one, and it also featured in my “review” of Jack Daniel’s but sadly I only got to try a couple of measures, so it wouldn’t be fair to score it here.

Lidl Recap

Putinoff Platinum Vodka (blue) – 6 – an average vodka that is entirely on par with Aldi’s alternative.

James Cook Premium Rum 3 year old - -10 – well, you know about this one now so let’s never speak of it again.

Coming Soon

Since beginning this post and indeed the whole experiment, I’ve been appraising Aldi’s Cocobay Coconut-Flavoured Rum Liqueur, their Glen Orrin 5 year old blended malt and their Specially Selected Irish Cream. You’ll be able to read about those in the coming months. As far as Lidl is concerned, I picked up the Queen Margot blended scotch (though that’s David’s birthday present) and a Romanetti Extra Dry vermouth. So again, check back another time for updates.

Since purchases have clearly been weighted in favour of Aldi so far, a simple totting up doesn’t suffice here, so instead I’ll take an average score. That means Aldi currently stands on an encouraging 6.43 out of 10, while Lidl racks up a confusing -2 out of 10. It is clear that I need to be visiting Lidl a few more times in the coming months to see if any of their products can raise that score out of the gutter. I’ll see you then, next week when I think I’m going to be talking about Rosso vermouth, a budget brand I picked up from Tesco. 

Spirit log: Jack Daniel's Old no. 7

do you know who I am?

Jack Daniel’s Old No 7 must be one of the most recognisable whisky brands in the world. Seen on t-shirts, on taxis, in the movies, with such legends as Lemmy and Slash… and yet… it is somewhat disparaged among those who profess to be connoisseurs of whisky – of scotch in particular. Perhaps it’s the too cool for school image, perhaps it’s that it can so often be seen being mixed with coke… I don’t know. I do know that at its normal UK price of £26-28, it was never going to be top of my shopping list, but at £15? You know what was going to happen next.

I’ve never actually owned a bottle of Old No 7 before, but yes, of course I’ve tried it. I still didn’t know where I stood on my opinion of it though – I’d often thought it was a little on the sweet side, and even once or twice might have said it is for people who want to play at drinking whisky, tantamount to a soft drink. What a snob.

It’s fine to play though, isn’t it? I’m not above drinking JD…

Previous Experiences of Note

I guess I haven’t tried it that many times, but I do have one or two conflicting impressions informed by these rare occasions. First, I remember my friend Adam bringing a bottle to a poker game where a number of different spirits were on offer (Maker’s Mark, Highland Park, Jameson’s, el Jimador…) and when tasting JD later on in the evening I was mostly getting banana hints – more like banana flavoured sweets than the fruit itself.

That impression stuck with me for a while until a tasting with the Manchester Whisky Club where we were presented with three unidentified samples at the beginning of the evening. One was Irish, one scotch and the other - no doubt included in order to compare unfavourably with the Jameson’s, which was the focus of the evening - was Jack Daniel’s. When the host asked the room which of the three samples they preferred, it was just me who liked the one with the silky-smooth mouthfeel. It was revealed that this one was Jack Daniel’s, and the room sneered smugly. I hadn’t identified it as Jack Daniel’s, nor could I detect any hints of banana this time, but I know when I like something… in comparison to something else at least.

So finally I have a bottle of my own, and it is time to really get to know it. Fulfilment came one Friday night, shortly after the passing of the DYC8. Despite my previous experiences, and failure to identify it that one time, there is something distinctive about Jack Daniel’s, a dark, charred flavour that it is easy to assume is a result of the charcoal filtering that goes on prior to ageing. Whether that is the cause…  I have no idea – I certainly don’t notice a charred flavour in any of the various brands of vodka that are filtered that way.

What we really want to know

I didn’t have any plans for this, but fate decreed that while I was appraising Jack Daniel’s Old No 7, I would also get the chance to carry out a direct comparison with a budget equivalent – Aldi’s finest, Clarke’s bourbon.

I’ve never even considered buying this before, but it all came about because Mrs Cake decided to make me my very own irish cream for Christmas. Yes, she knows I love irish cream, so one day when she told me she couldn’t think of anything to get me for Christmas, and I flippantly replied “get creative”, she actually did and made me some.

Mrs Cake’s decision meant she needed to get some whisky, and she heard that bourbon would do just fine so she just picked something up at Aldi – Clarke’s. And lucky me, after my gift had been presented, I was also given what had been left over – essentially four shots.

Just because I’d never considered buying it didn’t mean I didn’t want to find out what it tasted like, so after trying the homemade irish ceam, I tried a glass of the bourbon too – making sure to reserve enough for a direct comparison with the JD a few days later.

So before we see how it stacks up, let’s take a quick look at the bottle… I see it doesn’t state “bottled for Aldi” on it anywhere, which is something of a surprise, and that it fulfils the minimum requirement of being 40% ABV. So there’s no particular reason to think this might be bad.

I emptied the Clarke’s into a glass, and poured a couple of measures of the JD into another, then went through to the lounge for a bit of Important Things with Demetri Martin.

There is little to choose between the two in terms of nose, and in flavour there is no obvious difference in terms of quality. Clarke’s is a little more sour and the JD did reveal that ghostly banana note, but on this one it’s all a matter of personal preference and value. I’d like to say they are actually equally good, though I do marginally prefer the JD. Having said that, at £12.97 Clarke’s costs less than half what you would generally expect to pay for JD’s image and reputation [read: marketing]. I think I still lack sufficient experience with American whiskies to be an authority on this but if we were to use JD as a benchmark, Clarke’s measures up quite well. In fact, if bourbon was something you had to have in your liquor cabinet, and you were struggling for funds one month, Clarke’s would do just nicely.

Clarke's - all by its self

Whatever your opinion of Jack Daniel’s, I think it’s good stuff. With so much whisky out there to try though, I wouldn’t be paying full price for it, but I won’t be shy if I see an offer like this again.

As for the Clarke’s? Aldi’s spirits are never on offer and bourbon isn’t currently one of my essential spirits so while it’s a steal at under £15, it’s unlikely I’ll be plumping for it any time soon.

Now, the proof they say, is in the pudding. In this instance, what I mean by appropriating that cliché, is that we can infer something about the quality of the JD by my use of it. I always have several whiskies on the go at the same time, so if one of them is the one I bring out when I have guests over, or that I save for when the time is just right, we can conclude that it must be of some quality – at the very least better than the others.

If it’s the one I bring out early in the evening, it is probably cheap but fairly enjoyable. If I swig it out of the bottle before I go out drinking or use it to fill my hipflask, you can be fairly sure I don’t think much of it.

Over it’s lifespan, my use of the JD sadly falls into the last category. I used it in my hipflask, I experimented with it (as you will learn on this blog in the coming weeks) and yes, I may have swigged a little out of the bottle from time to time. So I think we can conclude that for me at least, the JD doesn’t tick all my boxes. I prefer a nice single malt, and probably a decent blend and I don’t feel I’m wasting the JD by experimenting with it. Is that a bad thing? We don’t have to take it that way, but it does say something.

One last thing before I draw a line under this investigation; my recent trip to Canada turned up something that I have been wondering about of late –ever since research on Talisker 10 led to the idea that oxidation can actually be a good thing for whisky, rather than universally a bad thing, as I had understood up to that point.

I arrived at my mother-in-law’s to find that she had two JD miniatures that she would like me to drink. One had already been opened, and a small amount had been consumed, but nevertheless I drank both on the same evening, and found that the one that had already been opened… tasted better. It was sweeter with softer edges and was generally a more pleasant experience. I actually asked how long ago it had been opened, but unsurprisingly my mother-in-law didn’t have a clue. It had probably been opened by someone else and frankly, it could have been a couple of years ago or more. There wouldn’t have been much air in that little bottle but nevertheless, it pointed me in the direction of a realisation that appears to be becoming more self-evident; whisky is actually improved to an extent by oxidation. I’m sure there is a point at which it goes too far, but it certainly seems you’re safe for a good few months – unless in this case the contents were from two different batches, one of which was far better than the other.

Some people suggest you should open a new bottle and then leave it for 15 minutes before pouring to allow the spirit to open up. Frankly, I don’t massively see the point in that. Why not pour it into your glass, then leave that for 15 minutes?

Some also say that you should leave your dram for as many minutes as years it is old… which seems like an odd sentence. I’ve been trying that on and off, and to be honest, it takes me half an hour to drink a whisky anyway, so even if I don’t leave it for 10, 12, 15 minutes, some of the spirit will have been sitting in my glass that long.

Oh well, it’s all things to think about. Where was I?

At the end, that’s where. This week’s post comes to you a little late as Mrs Cake and I have been soaking up the sun in Gloucestershire and Glastonbury. You’ll be able to read all about those at some point in the indefinite future. Next week I’ll probably be looking at the endosymbiotic relationship that has been known to exist between booze and chocolate. Join me for that. For now though, it’s back to everyday life where people get arsey at work, dogs shit on the high street and someone has to make the fricking dinner. And I was all refreshed, too.