CHEESE is almost a must at Christmas alongside chocolate and Baileys – but which supermarket offers the best one?
With everyone looking to save money this Christmas, The Sun has been finding out how you can enjoy a festive feast on the cheap.
We’ve tested some of Britain’s favourite seasonal specialities to find out which supermarket own-brand goods are the best quality for the price.
This time we’re looking at a Christmas classic: Wensleydale cheese with cranberries.
We bought packs of the cheese from Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Lidl.
For each one, we gave it a score out of 10 for taste and a score out of 10 for value, based on the price per 100g.
This score also took into account the amount of cranberries in the cheese and how healthy it is.
Here’s how the cheeses scored out of 20 overall:
Tesco Wensleydale with cranberries
- £2.20 for 200g
This Tesco cheese had a nice creamy taste and contained big juicy cranberries.
At £1.10 per 100g, it was a middle-of-the-range price.
But it was the most fatty of all the cheeses we tested, containing 17.5 per cent saturated fat.
- Taste: 7/10
- Value: 7/10
- Total: 14/20
Asda Wensleydale with cranberry
- £2.20 for 200g
The Asda cheese had a higher cranberry content than all the other cheeses we tested, at 14 per cent (compared to 13 per cent for the rest).
But the cheese itself let it down. It had a tangy, sour taste and a rubbery texture.
Although the same price as cheeses from Morrisons and Tesco, it was nowhere near as good.
- Taste: 4/10
- Value: 6/10
- Total: 10/20
Morrisons Yorkshire Wensleydale with cranberry
- £2.20 for 200g
This Morrisons cheese had a traditional Wensleydale taste and was decent value for money at £1.10 per 100g.
It was let down by the fact the cranberries weren’t very even spread throughout the cheese – so some parts had lots of fruit and other parts had none.
It was also the saltiest product we tried, containing 1.06g of salt per 100g, a sixth of your daily allowance.
- Taste: 8/10
- Value: 7/10
- Total: 15/20
WINNER Sainsbury’s Wensleydale and cranberry
- £2.50 for 200g
The Sainsbury’s cheese had an authentically crumbly texture and classic Wensleydale taste.
It contained juicy cranberries and a hint of Christmas spice. A perfect Christmas cheese.
At £1.25 per 100g it was the most expensive product we tried – but worth the extra pennies.
- Taste: 9/10
- Value: 7/10
- Total: 16/20
Aldi Emporium Wensleydale with cranberry
- £1.79 for 200g
Aldi’s cheese had an unpleasant plasticine-like texture and a bitter aftertaste.
Although one of the cheapest cheese we tried, at 90p per 100g, we didn’t think it was worth buying.
- Taste: 2/10
- Value: 7/10
- Total: 9/20
Lidl Wensleydale with cranberry
- £1.79 for 200g
The Lidl version of the cheese was creamy with very sweet cranberries.
It was smooth and enjoyable to eat – but not an authentic crumbly Wensleydale.
At 90p per 100g, it was the joint cheapest cheese we tried so a real bargain.
- Taste: 6/10
- Value: 8/10
- Total: 14/20
