We sampled the cheapest wines to help you with your budget boozing

It left us with stomach aches and regret


We tried taking cheap drinking to the extreme, and tested out wines that cost less than £4.

Before we embarked on our vile adventure

Courtesy of Tesco, Lidl, and your much adored Scotmid, we enjoyed a couple “shit wine and cheese nights” that left us with only stomach aches and regret.

Before beginning our quest, however, we quickly realised that our first year student flat so typically does not have a corkscrew.

We tried many techniques including but not limited to:

Putting the wine bottle in a shoe and slamming it against the wall.

Soz neighbours

Attempting to twist a coat hanger into a corkscrew.

Fact

And just stabbing it with a knife.

Re-enacting the shower scene from Psycho

None of these were successful, so we eventually had the brilliant idea to just borrow one from another flat.

Conde Noble vino blanco

A white wine from Lidl that was described as “soft on the pallet” was anything but.

Reminiscent of piss (as you’ll hear in accordance with all of the wines), this wine provided the victim with an initially terrible taste, followed by an after taste of water.

This phenomenon can only be described as a cheap imitation Jesus wine, turned from water but didn’t necessarily make it all the way there.

We theorized that this was intended to confuse you into drinking more.

We found that Lidl gouda paired quite nicely with this wine, even though the bottle strongly encouraged you drink this with soup.

Truth

You can enjoy these mind games, the taste of shame, and an 11 per cent abv for only £2.99 from Lidl.

Conde Noble vino tinto

The just as rubbish brother of the Conde Noble vino blanco above, this red wine was described as bringing back horrific childhood memories.

Sadness

Similar to the sister white wine’s mind games, this wine has no scent, but provides a taste that can only be described as bad.

One of our resident wino’s went as far to say that it has a car screen washer fluid taste claiming that she did, indeed, have experience with this.

Again, this shit wine paired surprisingly well with the shit cheese.

Lidl products gotta stick together

For the same price and alcohol content as the white wine, I would strongly recommend buying the white instead.

La Mancha

This of all the cheap wines received the award for most deceiving and disappointing.

The description on the back of this charming bottle of red claims that the wine was mentioned in a book by the same brilliant man that wrote Don Quixote.

To think that we were pretty much drinking history for the price of £3.79, we had high hopes to say the least.

We were soon put in our place.

Eyebrow game will never be as strong as Miguel de Cervantes

The wine has an extraordinarily acerbic scent that says “I’m here and I was in a book goddammit”.

The taste has the same bitterness as beer and does not at all live up to Don Quixote.

The look of pure disappointment

We would have rather paid £3.79 not to drink this.

If you do decide to indulge in this donkey shit (get it, Don Quixote, donkey shit) for this budget pushing price with an abv of 12.5 per cent, this absolutely requires shite gouda chaser.

Unless you hate yourself.

Bucksfizz

Before we even talk about the drink, can we just talk about the font on this label.

just what

I mean, you had one job, and you made it read like Bucks Jizz.

Why? Just, why?

The American exchange student in shock

Ironically, this wine smelt the most akin to piss.

Remarkably it still managed to be somewhat sweet, fizzy and similar to just really really bad orange juice.

Overall, it didn’t make us cry, but it still wasn’t nice.

Yay for buck’s jizz

This somewhat manageable bottle of mixed sparkling orange juice and white wine can be bought from Scotmid for the low, low price of £1.99 at 4 per cent abv.

Lambrini Original

This bottle provided no description of flavour as most bottles do.

Is this because it had no flavour? Or was it trying to provide a specialized drinking experience that attracted a certain unlabelled demographic?

It was neither.

Rather, it was just cheap.

Welcome to student life

Winning the award for a smell most similar to grape, this white’s taste completely threw us off guard.

While the drink was bubbly and grapey, the after taste was akin to a rotting orange, or the way your mouth tastes when you wake up after a night out.

Basically, if this wine was a person, it’s name would be Britneee.

Unique, but still trashy.

This mysterious bottle can be bought for the humble price of £1.49, with a strugglingly low abv of 7.5 per cent, at Tesco.

Lambrusco Rosé

In defence and fairness to this wine, it’s recommended to be served chilled, and we had it warm.

Nevertheless I’m sure it would have tasted equally as tragic, just colder.

I cannae do it

Another wine that just reminded us of juice, it provided an initial smell and after taste of a fruity cider.

And if that’s what you’re looking for in your wine, well, more power to you.

Purchase this strange, yet somewhat reasonable, wine from Tescos for a fair £2.49, with an extremely unfair abv of 5 per cent.

Tesco Everyday Value Spanish Rosé Wine

It comes in a carton, so we tried to prepare for the disgustingness to come.

sniff test to prepare

But nothing could prepare us for the taste of this vile, vile atrocity that they have shamed the word wine with.

It smelt initially quite sour and alcoholic, almost like purell.

We once left a bottle of wine open for a few months on accident, and it pretty much tasted exactly like that.

It was absolutely awful, and none of us could manage to actually swallow it.

Please, I beg of you, don’t buy this 10.5 per cent abv carton wine for £3.95 from Tescos.

Save yourselves.

Spanish Red Wine

Described as “EZ soft drinking” and having “gentle strawberry and cherry flavours”, whoever was marketing this wine was clearly a pathological liar.

More pungent than anything we had tried so far, we knew that this was going to be the pièce de résistance of this extravaganza.

And it was.

Death in a bottle pretty much

The taste was as close to vinegar as you could get before putting it on your fish and chips.

One of our taste testers ended up spitting it out and screaming “what the fuck” after the first sip.

Literally can’t believe I spent £2.99, on this 11 per cent abv “red wine”.

Overall, this cheap wine tasting was a mistake and a half; please don’t drink any of these.

Hello future employers, this is me with four bottles of wine