Lidl’s wine range consists of a permanent core offering of some 150 different wines, layered with a carousel of Wine Tour wines that change each month. Typically, each Wine Tour will consist of around 16 different wines although not all of these are ranged to every store.

If you are pitching up to a Lidl branch (which number over 980) with no recommendations or personal favourites to hand, my advice is to head straight for the Wine Tour bottles.

The set arriving in store this month (late June) is relatively weak (sod’s law, just as I write about them), but I usually find these offer a higher hit rate than the core range. Naturally there are exceptions, but wines in the core range are often quite sweet, and/or subjected to an oak treatment (sometimes from chips or staves – the narrow planks of wood used to construct barrels – I’d guess, from tasting them) that gives them a gloopy, confected vanilla taste. However, the Wine Tour range usually have more varietal personality and taste, well, more like true wines.

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Lidl’s best core wines – sparkling

Lidl’s best core wines – rosés

Lidl’s best core wines – whites

Lidl’s best core wines – reds

Lidl’s best Wine Tour wines

How I tasted

Why you can trust us

Another tip is to look for the scores given by Master of Wine Richard Bampfield who works for Lidl as a consultant. You can see some of these in store and some online. Bampfield gave good scores to two of the incoming (from June 26) Wine Tour wines that were not available for me to taste when I wrote this: the Cuvée de Brieu Sauvignon Blanc (£8.49) and the Cuvée de Brieu Syrah (also £8.49). I have been tasting Lidl’s wines and looking at Richard Bampfield’s scores and listening to his recommendations from the range for years, and have come to view him as a principled guide whose judgment can be trusted. “Richard is a safeguard for us,” according to Lidl’s PR Hannah Steel. “He scores wines and if they are not performing well we might go back to the supplier.” Bampfield says Lidl put him under no pressure to give good scores; note that if a wine scores poorly, the score is not used.

Lidl’s budget rival Aldi has a couple of wines that have achieved cult status amongst middle-class shoppers (the Crémant du Jura and the Veuve Monsigny Champagne). Lidl doesn’t quite have any equivalents, although its Comte de Senneval Champagne (£13.99) does, deservedly, have a strong following.

Lidl’s best core wines – sparkling

Arestel Cava Brut NV, Spain

Crémant de Loire Brut NV, France

Crémant de Loire Brut Rosé NV, France

Comte de Senneval Champagne Brut NV, France

Lidl’s best core wines – rosés

Vinho Verde Rosé 2024, Portugal

Breath of Paradise Rosé 2024, Côtes de Provence, France

Lidl’s best core wines – whites

Chevalier de Fauvert Chardonnay 2024, Pays d’Oc, France

Ventoux Blanc 2024, France

Deluxe New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc 2024, Awatere Valley, Marlborough, New Zealand

Lidl’s best core wines – reds

Copy of Deluxe New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc 2024, Awatere Valley, Marlborough, New Zealand

Deluxe Argentinian Malbec 2024, Uco Valley, Argentina

Deluxe Australian Cabernet Sauvignon 2024, Coonawarra, Australia

Lidl’s best June Wine Tour wines

Eje Monastrell 2023, Alicante, Spain

How I tasted

To make the following selection of wines, I tasted 40 bottles of wine at a Lidl press tasting in early June 2025. These comprised seven wines from the July Wine Tour and 33 from the core range. In addition, also at the press tasting, I tasted 12 bottles from the August and September Wine Tour ranges so that this article can be updated as new wines become available. I also accepted Lidl’s offer to send me a further seven samples of wine from the core range to taste at home. Most of these samples were wines I had liked and recommended in a previous vintage and this delivery of bottles generated three of the recommendations above.

Why you can trust us

Victoria Moore is the author of the best-selling The Wine Dine Dictionary and an award-winning journalist who writes The Telegraph Magazine’s drinks column. With a postgraduate diploma in psychology, she also runs workshops on wine and smell. Her impressive list of awards includes Louis Roederer Wine Columnist of the Year, Louis Roederer Online Communicator of the Year and Fortnum & Mason Drinks Writer of the Year. The Wine Dine Dictionary won the André Simon Special Commendation Award and was also Fortnum & Mason Drink Book of the Year 2018. Follow Victoria on Instagram@how_to_drink.