A startling revelation from Aldi

NV Veuve Monsigny This well-packaged Champagne, with its insultingly low price point, is a genuine revelation.

Matthew Jukes
By Matthew Jukes
published

NV Veuve Monsigny

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)

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. 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, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

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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