If you spend a fiver on a bottle of wine, you are spending very, very little on the liquid inside. After the excise duty, VAT, packaging and logistics costs are taken off, the approximate spend on wine is just 25p, according to wine merchant Bibendum’s Vinomonics calculation. By upping your spend to £7.50, the money going on wine increases to £1.38, as some other costs remain fixed or increase only modestly.

So how good, or rather bad, can wine be when it costs only 25p a bottle? Tesco has been replacing its own-label inexpensive wines with new branded bottles at £5 or below since last August. First they listed the Taparoo Valley range from Australia, a set called Lateral from Chile, and Casa Mana and Vineyards wines, both from Spain. This month they have added an Italian range called Caparelli, Firemark wines from Argentina and Cape Kyala from South Africa. More new brands are due in the next few months. Many are priced less than £4, let alone £5.

I tasted through a selection of these cheap bottles and my highlights are below. Others ranged from the mundane to the ‘meh’. Those I actively disliked were Taparoo Valley Merlot 2020 (too sweet and jammy) and Firemark Malbec 2021 (also sweet and with a burnt flavour). 

Of the best ones, it should be said that at these prices you can’t expect compelling complexity and you certainly wouldn’t keep them for any long period before opening. Buy to drink within a couple of weeks. But I would happily pour all five featured here as simple quaffing wines at summer parties, picnics and barbecues. Tread carefully, very carefully, at under a fiver, and you can come upon a few genuine bargains.