We taste tested 16 supermarket bottles for Christmas (2024)

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine. So said Cliff Richard, and nobody's disagreeing. Except on which wine we should be having - especially when it comes to mulled wine.

The classic Christmas tipple dates right back to the Roman Empire, and people drink it across the world in various forms to this day. Of course, it's not hard to make, but browse any supermarket during the festive season and you'll see a bottle peeping out at you - several in some cases.

So why spend time stirring wine, adding sugar and spices and checking you've got it right, when you could simply unscrew a cap, heat up the contents of a bottle and get stuck in?

But as easy as it might be, is pre-made mulled wine as good as when it's crafted by your own fair hand, Santa hat askew and Christmas tunes playing in the background?

For food and drink writer, broadcaster and event host Andy Clarke, author of 'Home Bar', the key is balance: 'What you're looking for is a balance of nice red wine, a boozy kick, just the right level of fruity sweetness and the right level of Christmas spice. It's all about balance'.

The same applies if you're making your own, with Clarke's key tip to use a half decent red wine as the base: 'I'm not saying use a really expensive bottle of wine but people think they should use the cheapest wine they can find.

'You wouldn't cook with a substandard piece of beef and hope it's okay when you put the trimmings around it, you have a good ingredient, so make sure you use a nice tasting wine.

'I always think something like a sub-£10 Chianti would be good'. You'll often need more sweetener or sugar than you need, he added, and without it, you'll have a bitter, boozy concoction - especially if you've added spirits.

'When it comes to spirits, never feel you have to use one spirit' he continued.

'I often put things in like triple sec, or a Cointreau, brandy, or even gins and vodkas. Use up what you've got in your cabinet and make space for the new ones!'

The final hint is to use nice spices like cloves and cinnamon sticks (not powder), as well as slices of fresh orange or even clementine.

I now know how to make my own, but I'm curious as to whether I can save myself the hassle over the festive season.

So I've embarked on a mince pie-fuelled mission to find the best pre-made supermarket mulled wine, grabbing bottles from every major supermarket, along with some of their more leftfield additions like gingerbread mulled wine (which seems to be a 'thing' these days), and trialling both the bogstandard versions and the higher end ones where they're offered.

The prices range, with budget supermarketsLidl and Aldi selling 75cl bottles of mulled wine for as little as £1.99 and £2.39, while the pricier offerings from the likes of Waitrose and come in between £5 and £6. Still not ridiculous - but will they be noticeably better?

I invited a neighbour round and we set out on our scientific experiment. I've got 15 wines, and she notices I'm missing the AsdaExtra Special version but just happens to have one at home - so we add that to the list.

We also make our own mulled wine as per Andy Clarke's instructions - using it as a 'control', and reminding us that you can probably make your own mulled wine for £4-£10 depending on how expensive a bottle of wine you buy.

It actually doesn't take long, and our only concern is making sure we keep the temperature low so we don't boil off thealcohol.

We then set out to work our way through all 16 bottles scattered around my kitchen. They vary in ABV - a difference that seems to correspond to the price - with the higher end more expensive versions around 11 per cent, while the cheapies sit down at 5 per cent.

There's a chocolate version that's a scary 15 per cent and tastes more of a liqueur, but we rule it out as not really being mulled wine.

The same goes for the gingerbread versions, which get the thumbs down from both of us. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and standard mulled wine without some strange injection of gingerbread flavour is absolutely fine, thanks very much.

We can't even blame one madcap supermarket creator, because a few of them do it. But I'll be steering clear at the next Christmas party I go to.

We decide we might be here all night if we heat each one conventionally, so we heat a small glass of each one in the microwave and embark on a thorough taste test, taking notes as we go.

Unsurprisingly, the pricier ones for the most part have more body, more of the attributes Clarke has pointed out, and are generally better.

The cheaper versions are thinner - in flavour and in the consistency, which has a thinness more reminiscent of a glass of Ribena than a rich mulled wine.

They also vary in sweetness, and most are more sweet than their more expensive rivals. We start thinking of them as 'party wines' vs the ones you might keep for yourself.

After all, they're cheaper and less alcoholic so probably better for quaffing en masse.

Still, some are better than others, and we find ourselves with a few candidates for the top spot in our newly-created categories: 'party wine' and 'nice mulled wine'.

It would be rude not to give them a fair chance, so we carry out a 'taste-off' to find our winners. It's a close call, and we try to take into account, flavour, price and all the other variables.

We find ourselves almost willing an underdog to win, but we have to stay true to the system, and with this the M&S version comes out on top, and Sainsbury's Taste the Difference a close second.

Yes, the M&S one is the most expensive at £6, but it's also the nicest, which I guess goes to show you get what you pay for. Others come close, but not quite, and it's the one I'd choose if I really couldn't face doing my own.

After all, if I've got to fork out £6 for a decent bottle of red to make my own, why not just get someone to do the hard work?

But fear not - I get you don't want to splurge on a £6 bottle of mulled wine - maybe more - if you're entertaining, so we found a winner from the cheaper versions too.

It came down to Asda vs Aldi - £2.50 vs £2.39 and an ABV difference of 0.5 per cent. After much deliberating, Aldi took the title. There wasn't much in it, but it had more body and considering it was one of the cheapest of the budget versions, would be fine served up at a party or maybe if you're a few mulled wines in already.

Our duty done, we toast with a glass or two of our faves and consider ourselves well prepped for a Christmas party. Now all we need is the mistletoe to go with the wine.

THE VERDICT