A startling revelation from Aldi
NV Veuve Monsigny This well-packaged Champagne, with its insultingly low price point, is a genuine revelation.
NV Veuve Monsigny, Grand Reserve, Champagne, France
£16.99, Aldi
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Bargain basement Champagne is a dire category of wine that I force myself to taste because it is my job (and someone has to do it). Imagine my surprise when I sipped "ordinary" Veuve Monsigny (£12.49) a fish-tank-scented sparkler which, incredibly, wins occasional awards and then traded up to its black-label sibling, expecting an even more dismal experience and yet finding a wine which made me gasp with joy.
This rather well-packaged Champagne, with its insultingly low price point, is a genuine revelation. I went one further and tasted the 2010 Vintage Veuve Monsigny (£19.99) and regretted it. The vintage wine is a monster with clumsy, yeasty, burpy fruit, but the Grand Reserve, which by now looked like it was wearing a tuxedo next to its stablemates, shone even brighter and so I went back for a second sip.
This wine is a vinous aberration in the sparkling Aldi cosmos it is only the second wine from Aldi to have made my column in 682 issues and I urge you to take the plunge and taste it. It is fabulously well-priced, beautifully appointed and genuinely delicious. It cannot last. Just as the first vintage of Toro Loco, which I wrote up in the Mail, and which sold by the container-load, didn't last. But don't worry, just load up. It might be another six and a half years before another one comes along.
Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com)
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Matthew Jukes has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006.
He has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website.
Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.
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