Now it’s officially December, we felt that it was time to get the festive ball rolling and bring the Mulled Wine glasses out from the cupboard. Mulled Wine has always been big on our families Christmas agenda and usually we like to mull our own. However, this year we thought it would be a fun experiment to blind taste test some of the leading UK supermarket Mulled Wines and see which one was the tastiest of them all..
Watch the video below to hear my thoughts and then make sure you check out the video at the bottom of the page to get my mother’s perspective! 🍷
The Supermarket Mulled Wines We Tried…
We didn’t want to try too many different brands of Mulled Wine, as we wanted to keep the videos pretty short. However, we tried to get our hands on a nice broad range of retailers:
Harvest Fruits Mulled Wine (SPAR Brand), 8% vol: £3.49
The cheapest of the bunch was our local Spar Shop’s Harvest Fruits Mulled Wine. At 8% it’s not very strong to begin with, let alone once it has been heated up. I thought this variety was be pretty horrendous if i’m being honest, as it had an almost earthy flavour to it. However, my mum thought it was the best of the bunch and believed that it was the glass which most encapsulated Christmas. It’s worth noting that Iceland also sells these bottles for just £1.42 – which is a bargain by any standards.
Tesco Mulled Wine, 10% vol: £3.50
Tesco’s Mulled Wine is also really affordable (so much so we bought two bottles on our last visit) and at 10% vol it isn’t too shabby. We both placed this bottle in the middle of our ratings, finding it perfectly nice and very drinkable. On price alone I would have no complaints drinking this as my go-to mulled wine this season.
Sainsbury’s Mulled Wine, Taste the Difference, 11% vol: £4.50
The Sainsbury’s Taste the Different Mulled Wine has been our mulled wine of choice so far this year (simply because we do a lot of our grocery shopping at the local Sainsbury’s). However, when compared to the rest of the bunch, we were both disappointed with this variety. It’s by no means bad, but it just isn’t the best value of the lot..
Waitrose Mulled Wine, 11% vol: £4.99
Next up was the Waitrose Mulled Wine. I had high hopes for this wine, because Waitrose does offer a fabulous selection of reds year-round. It was my personal favourite bottle of the bunch – with just enough clove and spice, without being overpowering. It’s not too sweet and packs some real festive flavour. My mother was nowhere near as keen on it, stating that it didn’t taste ‘mulled’ enough for her liking.
Lyme Bay Mulled Wine, 10% vol: £8.49
Lyme Bay was by far the most expensive of the bunch, although it was only as strong in volume as the cheaper Tesco variety. We both really enjoyed this bottle and placed it as our joint second favourite mulled wine. I thought it had a smooth flavour and was not dissimilar to cherry wine. It may be a little bit too sweet for some people’s tastes but that really didn’t put me off (Christmas is all about indulgence after all).