2 Buck Chuck vs. The Competition: We Tried These (Cheap) Wines So You Don't Have To

Dry January is officially over for those who observe, and what better way to ring in the rest of the year than some wine that won't break the bank?

Maybe you're trying to save money as part of a New Year's resolution, or maybe you're finding ways to rein in your budget to make up for the rent increase that could come this month. Or maybe you've always wanted to try $5 wines, but didn't want to risk ending up with one you hated.

Whatever your reason, we thought we'd hit up Trader Joe's and Aldi and put our taste buds to the test — in the interest of public service journalism, of course.

Our taste test

A few of our extremely scientific ground rules for the tasting:

1. We limited ourselves to two bottles of wine you can buy for $3.49, Aldi's Winking Owl brand and Trader Joe's Charles Shaw (aka four-buck Chuck — inflation comes for us all).
2. We only tried the merlot to keep the comparisons 1:1 — sorry we didn't try more varieties, it was a Wednesday!
3. Our 10 taste testers didn't know which wine was which to avoid confirmation bias.

First up: Aldi's Winking Owl merlot, which most people described as having an earthy taste. Reactions were mixed, to say the least.

"It tastes like spoiled grape juice," managing editor Jason Wells said.

Our resident fine wine expert, editor George Kiriyama, who in the course of our research pointed us to a three-figure wine that he favors, was also unsparing in his assessment.

"It tastes like a $3.49 wine," he said. "I like my wine dry, so this is not hitting it for me."

But the wine was a hit for others in the newsroom.

"I think if you pair this with a nice cheese, this is a fun wine," education editor Ross Brenneman said.

Then, our team moved on to our next entry, Trader Joe's four-buck Chuck, which at least a few staff members said was an old college standby for them.

Our intern Anne To, recently turned 21, who we asked to take part in the survey since we didn't expect her to already have a discerning palette, gave the wine a middling review.

"It's not as bitter as other wines I've tasted, but it leaves my mouth feeling gross after I drink it," she said.

Others noted that this wine might be best for some specific uses.

"I would drink this at the end of the night, there's no more bottles of the good stuff," senior human resources generalist Cynthia Covarrubias — a Winking Owl aficionado — said. "And at the end of the night, you wouldn't want to use good stuff if you can't remember it."

Surprisingly, the wine did win over our resident wine expert Kiriyama, who said this was "much better than the other one."

But while the four-buck Chuck was less polarizing overall, lots of people still preferred Winking Owl. When it came time to take a vote, the results ended in a tie, although a couple tie-breaking votes gave the victory to Trader Joe's.

"Does that make me basic?" editor Dana Littlefield, who helped break the tie, asked. She was answered with a resounding no in the newsroom.

Full disclosure: I was the other tiebreaker who favored the four-buck Chuck. I thought both brands were very drinkable — for reference, my wine of choice is Bota Box — but I thought the four-buck Chuck was much smoother, sweeter, and more pleasant all-around.

And while we didn't try this ourselves, the consensus was that both wines would work to make sangria, though the jury's still out on whether that's a compliment.

What do wine experts say?

You don't have to take a bunch of journalists' word for it. LAist called up a couple experts to get their takes on the wines we tried. We talked to certified sommelier Brianne Cohen, who's reviewed all of the Trader Joe's $3.49 wines.

"You're getting exactly what you pay for," Cohen said. "What I can tell you is that they move a lot of wine, that's for sure. And I think for most wine drinkers who are just looking to have a simple, inexpensive wine on their dinner table or whatever it is, I think it will satisfy most people."

Cohen doesn't have an Aldi nearby, but we got another wine expert, Lucia Palm, to try out the Winking Owl merlot.

"I’ll be honest, I really didn’t like it," Palm wrote in an email to LAist. "I think it’s a perfect example of a CA wine that is mass produced to stay away from! It tasted like cherry cough syrup and wood chips."

So there you have it: It really is a matter of taste, but if one of these wines sounds good to you, maybe it's worth giving one of these wines a shot next time you're at the store. After all, they'll only cost you $3.49.

And if you've made it to the end of this article and decided you'd rather spend a few extra bucks for some $5 or $8 wine, we've got just the guide for you.

Ashley Rusch contributed reporting to this article.