What Do ALDI’s Best-Selling Wines in China Look Like?

In China’s supermarket landscape, Sam’s Club has long been the reference point for retailers studying wine sales. ALDI, by contrast, has taken a lower-profile path. Known in Europe as a “price butcher,” the German chain operates in China on a hard-discount model, built around a tightly edited assortment and aggressive pricing.

According to the China Chain Store & Franchise Association’s 2024 China Supermarket Top 100 ranking, ALDI China climbed 21 places to No. 61, with annual sales reaching RMB 2 billion (about US$278 million), up 100% year on year. With four new stores opening in Nanjing in late January, its total store count in China has now surpassed 100.

Direct sourcing, stripped margins

In wine, ALDI follows a playbook similar to Sam’s Club and Freshippo: direct sourcing and direct supply, bypassing the traditional importer-distributor-retailer chain. The result is a sharply compressed cost structure—and a level of pricing that few conventional supermarkets can match.

That strategy came into sharp focus in 2024, when ALDI launched a wine priced at RMB 99 for six bottles (about US$13.75), made from imported bulk wine and bottled domestically. The combination of ultra-low pricing and a model more commonly associated with industrial supply chains quickly drew attention, triggering a wave of imitation across China’s retail sector.

Beyond that viral hit, ALDI’s broader wine range offers further insight into how price-driven wine consumption is evolving. One useful lens is the retailer’s official wine repurchase ranking, calculated using seven-day repurchase data and designed to reflect short-term sell-through.

Across the top 10 wines on the list, none is priced above RMB 100 (about US$13.90) per bottle. The pattern reinforces ALDI’s discount positioning, but also mirrors a wider market reality. Even at Sam’s Club—whose core customers are middle-class households—wines priced above RMB 100 are rare among top sellers.

Consumer engagement, however, remains more modest. While Sam’s best-selling wines often attract tens of thousands of online reviews, ALDI’s top wines typically receive only a few hundred. That reflects both ALDI’s shorter operating history in China and its still-regional footprint, concentrated largely in Shanghai and Jiangsu.

What follows is a closer look at top 10 wines on ALDI China’s repurchase ranking, and what they reveal about price, style and consumer preference. 

Scroll through the pages to read them all.