The Wine Fairy

Our wine review of the day is…ta-da! A $5 Pinot Grigio from ALDI.

Wait, wait–I can explain: I bought this wine to put in my Italian sausage and kale pasta. But then I remembered that drinking bad wine helps you appreciate the good ones more. So I put on a brave face, twisted that screw cap, and grabbed a wineglass.

Discount grocery store ALDI debuted their California Heritage Collection in early 2024. Kiplinger’s reports that this is ALDI’s bid to compete with Trader Joe’s infamous Charles Shaw brand (a.k.a. Three Buck Chuck).

The ALDI wine perp walk–I mean, press release–introduces 9 varietally labeled California wines priced at $4.95. (That’s a step up from ALDI’s entry-level wine brand, Winking Owl, which retails for $3.95.) ALDI claims that California Heritage wines offer “elevated taste without the elevated price.” They must be extra ashamed of the Pinot Grigio though, because it doesn’t even appear in the photo alongside the other 8 wines.

I photographed it next to a pool to try to make it look more classy…I don’t think it worked:

I do not harbor high expectations for Pinot Grigio. Still, this is especially foul. Indistinct apple-juice aromas, pear candy, and a volatile, citrus-y smell that can only be described as Lemon Pledge furniture polish. And it’s oddly sugary. Pinot Egregious, indeed.

I am no stranger to (and no enemy of) ultra low-cost wines. Once sangria season ramps up, I probably will try other bottles from the California Heritage collection. And yet, this one sucked even harder than I feared it would.

This wine’s worst crime is how sweet it is. Cheap Pinot Grigio should taste like water, dammit–not fruit juice. For that reason, it’s not even a good cooking wine.

Okay, okay…it was actually completely fine in the aforementioned pasta. Italian sausage is already sweet and a little fruitiness helps to balance the bitterness of the kale. Another half glass of California Heritage was splashed into a tomato and vegetable soup (also fine). But later I tried to kill the rest of this bottle by making a beurre blanc and that was a disaster. Any amount of reducing concentrates the sugar in this wine so much that you have to whisk in a ton of extra lemon juice and salt just to make it taste like a savory sauce again.

So here is the moral of this story: Don’t be dumb and cheap like me. When you find yourself in ALDI and craving a dry white wine to go with dinner–or even to deglaze a pan with–dig just a little deeper into your pockets and get the “Specially Selected” Pinot Grigio.

That wine is from Alto Adige–a North Italian region renowned for its Pinot Grigio–and priced at around $10. Reverse Wine Snob calls it a “surprisingly good example of the variety.” Tasting Table also didn’t hate it, finding it to have a “youthful freshness, nice acidity, and light body.”

But California Heritage is a no. Unless you have some fruit, Sprite, and ice cubes handy, I’d recommend anything but this sorry excuse for a Pinot Grigio.

Bottle: ALDI California Heritage Pinot Grigio

Variety: Pinot Grigio

ABV: 12.5%

Suggested retail: $4.95

My rating: 2.2 (out of 10)

Further reading:

Kiplinger: ALDI’s New $5 California Wines Hit the Shelves

Aldi: California Heritage Collection

Review disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products for this review. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.