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. 

How do you select wine?

This week’s post comes to you a couple of days early because I won’t be around on Friday evening, when I normally add the finishing touches, and release it into the abyss. That’s right, my birthday treat has arrived, and the missus and I are headed on a road trip to the Isle of Islay, where they make several of my favourite whiskies. I never thought I’d go there, but there you go; Mrs Cake is known to pull out all the stops from time to time. I will tell you all about the trip and all the things I learn at some point in the future, but don’t be expecting it next week; it will probably take me a good couple of months to write it up. For now though, please enjoy this week’s post, which is concerned with how difficult it is for novices like me to go wine shopping.

Last Saturday the wife and I hosted a dinner party at our house for 8 of my friends from work. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work (pretty near a whole day cooking in the kitchen) that the missus organised and coordinated with military precision, and it required a lot of drinking. To facilitate the drinking though, I got to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes; booze shopping.

I’ve been budgeting in a ruthless manner since paying for numerous holidays in 2011 and the wedding in 2012 led to my credit card bill going through the roof, so I rather optimistically planned to get all the booze in for £30. Oddly enough, and thanks to Tesco’s clubcard scheme, I only exceeded that by £5.

It was a case of quantity not quality really, so not the most exciting trip ever, but it did give me chance to explore the possibilities of some budget brands, and I was able to leave feeling only a minimum quantity of guilt.

What was most challenging though, was the purchase of the wine. In case you missed it any of the previous times I said it, I’m just not into wine. I don’t find it interesting, I don’t find it particularly tasty, I don’t find it particularly demands that I drink it – unlike other kinds of booze, and I really don’t enjoy shopping for it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I dislike wine, but let’s say I have a glass of wine: it will take me ages to drink that glass, and then I won’t want another one. So suffice to say; I don’t really see the point, and I don’t see how anyone can be that bothered about it.

But! Sometimes it is necessary to buy wine, like when you’re hosting a party and some of the guests are going to be girls. Sure, I knew everyone would be bringing their own booze, but you do need to provide some basic provisions. To complicate things, two of our guests were Will and Catriona, who actively like wine. A lot. So I felt I needed to get some decent wine, if at all possible, even though it seemed likely we’d end up with it at the end of the night, and there’s no point in us ending up with it, because we just don’t drink wine. I drink beer and spirits and Mrs Cake just doesn’t tend to drink casually at all.

The other purchases were more or less trouble free. I started with vodka from Aldi. Mrs Cake had planned vodka jellies, and I wasn’t sure there was enough Red Square left to do the job. It turned out that there wasn’t – we used half a pint of vodka, half a pint of boiling water and half a pint of cold water to make the jelly, so the purchase of Aldi’s more premium brand proved necessary. I was tempted to get the brand that is just called “Vodka”, but they did have a Tamova Blue Label premium variety (as opposed to the standard red label), and I figured I’d go for that this time. It’s 50cl, 40% ABV, and £9.50 or something like that.

vodka; out with the old...

...and in with the new

I’ve tried it on its own since, and it’s neither better nor worse than any other standard budget vodka, from what I can tell without doing a proper taste test. I think it’s a bit stronger than the red Tamova, and a little bit more expensive, so that’s probably why it’s called ‘premium’.

I overruled Mrs Cake’s insistence that we should get the wine from Aldi. Sure, for us it’s ok, but “bottled exclusively for Aldi” just doesn’t seem right when it’s for other people.

It was off to Tesco then, where I picked up some beers (Tuborg, that only I drank), cider (Magners, that no one drank, but I have been enjoying since), and Sierra Reposado tequila (gold, 38% ABV, 50cl) that I used to make a variety of margarita (Cadillac) that went down quite well. I hadn’t seen the gold variety of Sierra before, and it now holds the record for briefest lifespan (about 3 hours from breaking the seal to placing the empty bottle in the recycling). About 24 measures were required for the cocktail, and we finished the rest off in shots. That’s what I bought it for, and it won’t be missed. My el Jimador, 100% agave has frankly exposed cheaper tequila for what it really is. I kept that under wraps for myself.

Yeah whatever, Neil; what about the wine? I’m getting to that: how do you choose wine? There’s so fricking much of it! Why is there so much? The prices vary greatly, and experts tell you that the more you pay, the better variety of grape you’re getting, but wine ‘experts’ on TV tell you that cheaper ones can be just as good… It’s difficult, and I don’t even care that much, but I did want my wine-appreciating friends to enjoy it.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to go overboard, and figured a bottle of white and a bottle of red would do. From what I’ve heard, pink (or rose) seems to have fallen somewhat out of general favour of late, and it seems we’ve already got two bottles of that in our cupboard.

So the first stop was the special offers section. If it said ‘half price’ and half price was £5 or less, it had a chance. I was struggling, because I have an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t buy Blossom Hill, Jacob’s Creek or Kumala (amongst others). I’m not sure why, but they just seem ordinary. Everyone’s had them before, they’re always on offer, and while I’m far from qualified enough to be a wine snob, I just don’t think they’re going to impress anyone when they see the bottle.

Mrs Cake offered, “look for ones that have got badges”. She meant of course, wines that have won awards – which is nearly all the ones in Aldi, but surprisingly few of the ones in Tesco. In one or two instances there were bottles that looked like they’d got badges, but we couldn’t be sure, and figured they were a cunning ploy to trick amateurs like us into buying them.

 Finally, after what seemed like forever, we chose two bottles. I have no idea what they were, where they were from, what grape variety they were made from or anything like that because, as I say, wine just isn’t interesting to me, so if you were hoping for some detail, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

At the party I made a point of asking people who cared about wine, how they went about selecting it. They said go to the special offer section, and look for badges. It seems we’d done the right thing. A lot of the awards are based on blind taste tests (IWSC or example), so you’d think they must be all right if they’ve got a badge. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily agree, though.

We managed to foist the bottle of red on our guests, but the white remained untouched, and has been added to the wine graveyard that takes up one half of my Special Spirits Cabinet. We also managed to acquire two further bottles from guests. Ass! And some cider – yay

I tried a glass of red a couple of days later, and I didn’t like it at all. Then, later in the week I stuck a half finished bottle of pink in the fridge and tried a glass – and that was really nice. Perhaps it’s too early to write pink wine off? I don’t know what brand it was, but it was pink so you probably don’t care anyway.

The vodka jellies went down very well, the cocktails went down very well, and the only thing that didn’t was my aguardiente de orujo (RuaVieja). I couldn’t believe it, but no one liked it AT ALL. I mean, that’s fine; more for me, but no one could believe I would enjoy drinking it; they looked at me like I was crazy or something. Well, I like it, I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Sadly it is now finished, but that just means I can start thinking about replacing it.

So, I’d like to know if you have any suggestions for making the chore of selecting wine easier. Don’t be shy. Be warned though, I don’t want recommendations, I want methods. Thanks in advance.