If You Buy One Thing at Aldi This Month, Let It Be This Shockingly Good $25 Dupe for a Fancy Name-Brand Favorite

Champagne is practically synonymous with celebration (at least in my home). I basically spend the entire month of December poppin’ bottles to usher in the holidays and kick off the new year. 

Champagne is, at its core, a sparkling wine (also dubbed as bubbly!) that originates and is produced in the Champagne region of France. It’s typically gold in hue and tends to have notes of citrus and apples that give it a higher acidity with delicate bubbles to balance it all out. The drink tends to run a bit of a higher price tag than other varieties of wine (hence why it’s reserved for special occasions), and like most things you can find at Aldi, you can get a bottle of Champagne for significantly less than other name-brand sparkling wines. Enter: Veuve Monsigny Brut Champagne, a $25 bottle of bubbly. 

So, naturally, we got our hands on a bottle to not just see if it’s worth it, but how it holds up against one of the most popular name-brand bottles in the world (that’s three times the price!). Here’s how it went.

To fairly test the two bottles, we chilled both in the same fridge for a few hours. When we were ready to test, we popped each one open and poured the Champagnes into a mix of unmarked flutes that I assigned A and B to conceal the brands’ identities. I recruited five coworkers to taste the two bottles of Champagne. 

Testers sampled Champagne A first, then B and openly shared thoughts throughout the testing (we were drinking Champagne, it was a party!). Shortly after, they were each asked to rank which Champagne they preferred best (via sticky note voting).

Surprisingly (and delightfully) the majority of our testers (five out of six!) preferred Aldi’s Veuve Monsigny Brut Champagne. In fact, our group generally thought it was the more $$$ bottle, too! It’s plenty vibrant with light citrus notes and “delicate bubbles,” which Rachel, our culinary producer, adored. When the brands were revealed, Rachel actually admitted to not being the biggest fan of the fancy stuff even before the test, but still thoroughly enjoyed the Aldi Champagne despite that. 

Vixon, our video producer, also found the Aldi bottle to be “fruit-forward” and more “full-bodied” compared with the $$$ version, while Ali, our associate groceries editor, found it way more drinkable and reminiscent of “celebratory bubbles!” She now has big plans to  save money this New Year’s Eve.

Even Ola, our culinary assistant and one taster who chose the more expensive bottle, was still thoroughly impressed by the “light, airy bubbles” of Aldi’s Champagne. She would be plenty happy drinking either in the future.

Find it in stores: Veuve Monsigny Brut Champagne, $24.99 for 750 milliliters at Aldi

Have you tried Aldi’s store-brand Champagne? Tell us about it in the comments below.