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Sampling Italian wines from Lidl

Sunday, June 11, 2017

The nice people at Lidl Northern Ireland sent me some bottles of their new Italian wine range to sample. I'm not known for any sort of expertise when it comes to wine but I do enjoy a tipple so was happy to give them a try!


While I enjoy a glass of wine, I really don’t understand much about what makes it good or bad.  I just know if I like it or not.  I have a few go to favourites and sway towards white in general, a glass of Rose on a summers day and some red when the majority at the table vote for it.  I have been to a couple of wine tasting events and while they were great fun, a lot of it went over my head while I focussed on enjoying the various kinds.  With this in mind, I invited some wine drinking friends around for dinner and to help me with the wine tasting.  They didn’t hesitate in saying yes.

Lidl kindly provided a list of the range of wines with space for some notes to help us and we started with the best of intentions, scribbling down what we thought of each one.  We started with a white, the Musita Gillol Doc Sicilia 2016 (£5.99)  We were hit by how fragrant this wine is.  It was a little bit too sweet for our taste (none of us have a sweet tooth) but very drinkable!

Next up was a debate between two reds, the Corte Aurelio Aglianico del Vulture 2015 (£5.99) and the Barbara d’Asti Superiore (£5.99).  Our choice of which to drink came down purely to the packaging with a preference for the bottle shape and black label  on the former.  Yes folks, this is the level of our sophistication and knowledge!  Out of the two of them, my preference taste wise was for the the Barbera d’Asti.  I don’t know much but I do know that Barbera is the grape and Asti is the province in north-west Italy where it’s made.  It has a slightly smoky flavour and is remarkable for it’s price.

As out sampling continued, our notes went out the window and at one stage, my hen Mabel was roped in for a photo of her checking the aroma of the wines.  One thing we all agreed on is that these wines are being sold at an amazing price and offer fantastic value!

Lidl may not be your automatic first choice of store for stocking up on wine but if it’s not, you may be missing a trick.  Did you know that they have over 80 wines available throughout the year and every bottle is rated and graded by independent Master of Wine, Richard Bampfield to ensure quality and value?

You can find out more about the range here

Thanks to Lidl NI and Smarts Communicate for the wine.

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