We tried 5 cheap wines from $2.99 to $11.99 — here's the only one worth buying

We tried cheap bottles of chardonnay from five popular brands to see which one tastes the best.
Woodbridge was the clear loser, since it had a
very unpleasant aftertaste.
Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw was in the middle of the pack because it was tasty, but also seemed a little watered down.
Yellow Tail came in first place because it had a very pleasant flavor, and tasted like quality wine.

Nothing beats a delicious glass of wine after a long day at work.

However, a good bottle of wine is expensive — but does it need to be?

I, along with five of my co-workers, put five inexpensive bottles of chardonnay to the test to see which one tasted the best as part of an ongoing INSIDER taste test series. In the past, we’ve compared everything from ice cream and fried chicken to cheap beer.

We bought all five bottles in New York City and spent anywhere from $2.99 to $11.99 per bottle. We performed our taste test blind to ensure that our ranking was not influenced by brand loyalty.

We compared each of the brands based on three categories: Flavor, quality, and aftertaste, ranking each bottle out of 30 points in total.

The brands we tried included: