This month we’re doing something a little different and issuing a challenge to the winner of our next monthly draw: beat our recession busting favourites in a supermarket challenge.

Lar Veale of SourGrapes.ie recently declared our exclusive Santa Alicia to be “cracking value at only €9.99 and beats the pants off anything from your local supermarket.” We think this is 100% correct, but we’d like you to put our best bargains to the test.

The winner of our April contest will get two of our favourite wines under a tenner and everything they need to go forth and find two supermarket wines under €10 to challenge them:

• 1 x Santa Alicia Reserva Sauvignon Blanc 2007
• 1 x Farnese Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2007
• 1 x €20 Tesco voucher
• 1 x Essential Wine Tasting Guide to prepare
• 1 x Curious Wines corkscrew to begin the battle

Obviously, we can’t force our valiant winner to spend their voucher on supermarket plonk, but our hope is that our brave hero (or heroine) will make their best effort in the Tesco aisle, choose two bottles under €10 each, and report back on how they stand up to our favourites.

How to Enter: All you have to do to enter the contest is join (or already be a member of) our monthly newsletter. We’ll draw a winner at random on the 8th of April when our next newsletter goes out, and deliver your Battle of the Recession Busters prize pack the day after (or whenever you’d like) free of charge. You are of course completely welcome to un-join the minute after the draw is done, but we only send one newsletter per month and we like giving discounts and free stuff to our members, so we hope you’ll stick around!

PS: Congrats to the winner of February’s contest, Terence Finn, who was drawn this morning!

We know, we know – everyone else is doing Paddy’s Day stuff for March but let’s face it: Ireland isn’t exactly a top producer of 1st class wines, and few wines come in that particularly festive shade of green.

But the 13th of March is also the Ides of March – a traditional Roman feast day and, on a less jolly note, the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated. (We’re assuming you’re up to date on your Shakespeare here.)

So we’re going with the Italy theme and giving away two glorious bottles of Italian wine and a prize hamper worthy of a Roman orgy. The lucky winner of our Ides of March prize pack will win:

• 1 x Dievolino Rosso Sangiovese 2006
• 1 x Dievolino Bianco Malvasia 2006
• 1 x An Italian epicure mini-hamper
• 1 x Julius Caesar: The Manga Edition

How to Enter: All you have to do to enter the contest is join (or already be a member of) our monthly newsletter. We’ll draw a winner at random on the 4th of March when our next newsletter goes out, and deliver your Ides of March prize pack the day after (or whenever you’d like) free of charge. You are of course completely welcome to un-join the minute after the draw is done, but we only send one newsletter per month and we like giving discounts and free stuff to our members, so we hope you’ll stick around!

PS: Congrats to the winner of February’s contest, Rebecca Clark, who was drawn this morning!