A while ago, at the start of the spring season, my wife purchased a bottle of Spring Bubbles from Aldi. The plan was to get it nice and chilled, and enjoy it with our dinner, so to expedite the process, she put it in the freezer instead of the fridge. We forgot all about it, and I came home from work the next day to an exploded bottle and frozen wine all over the place. Needless to say, I was not too happy, given the $9 per bottle going rate.
Fast forward three months. I really was curious to see how it tasted, so I decided to suck it up, and plunk down another $9; at the very least, we’d make sure we didn’t make the same mistake that we did last time! Already learning our lesson, we placed it in the fridge instead of the freezer, gave it a good chill, and poured it a few hours later.
When they call it Spring Bubbles, they’re not exaggerating…this stuff is ridiculously carbonated. This is an attribute I like with my wine, but we’re talking that this is about on par with most sodas. In other words, be careful, and be sure to pour it slow, because the faster you pour it, the frothier the head gets at the top–I ended up overflowing the top of a wine glass with the bubbles, and there was only about two inches of actual wine on the bottom. Tastewise, I was really expecting something a lot sweeter, especially given the fact it’s billed as a “sweet wine” according to the bottle. I would call it more tart than sweet, and I even caught a hint of dryness in there, though that might just be my taste buds, whose motto is “The sweeter the better”.
To liven it up, I plopped in a strawberry and a few blueberries, which gave it a nice taste. It’s also cool to see the bubbles attack the fruit as it gets dropped in…it’s literally like dropping an Alka-Seltzer tablet in water, which is a pretty neat effect that you won’t get with a lot of wines. As a dissenting opinion, my wife, who prefers things a little dryer than I do, absolutely loved this stuff. So I guess at the end of this all, the moral of the story is that taste is subjective, and these reviews, much like life itself, ultimately mean nothing.
Overall: 5/10. “Spring Bubbles” is right, as this is wine is aggressively carbonated–pour too fast, and you’ll have a glass full of bubbles with little-to-no-wine! I was honestly expecting something much sweeter, given the fact it’s billed as a “sweet wine” on the side; I found it to be more tart than sweet, with a surprisingly dry finish. On the other hand, my wife, who enjoys such things, thought it was one of the best wines we’ve ever purchased from Aldi. So I guess this review, like every other review for everything else in the world, is rather inconclusive; it can go either way, depending on your tastes.
