Tab Guide to getting smashed on the cheap

How many times have you bitched to your friend about the Cambridge nightlife only to hear those immortal words “Cindies is fine if you’re drunk enough”?

“But bars are expensive and I am a student!” you cry. This is true, but hear this: you don’t have to financially cripple yourself to attain the necessary level of stupor to make the worst club in the world bearable.

Below is the definitive guide to liquid fun for under a fiver:

Sainsbury’s basics wine

Hello Darkness my old friend…

The classic last resort. Look at in all its embarrassing glory: the plastic bottle, the defensive packaging ‘made for the table, not the cellar’ everything about Basics wine says ‘we all know you didn’t choose me for the flavour!’

If you know nothing about wine, it all tastes pretty similar anyway. Winey. Besides, if you’re going to tape it to your hands and try to down it in one, does it really matter which part of France it was from??

Sainsbury’s basics cider

If only we could find a good bench to drink it on…

Most alcoholic drinks, at a push, are fine. Basics cider is not fine. If you get blurry vision from this, it’s probably because the sugar has pushed you into the early stages of diabetes rather than the alcohol content. In fact, 2L bottles of cider may well be a capitalist conspiracy to ensure the poor health of the working classes.

Aldi Taurus

Taurus: celebrating the relationship between Bulls and Pears since 1973

If you can make it all the way up that hill to Aldi there is a whole new world of moderately-priced tipple at your fingertips! At four cans for £2.76, the pear cider is convenient and does the job – if you like Bulmer’s, you’ll tolerate this!

It tastes like a pear drop someone else has already sucked, but definitely value for drunkenness. Plus the cans can be easily smuggled into the queue if you’re desperate.

Aldi fake Malibu

Actual ingredients include marzipan and hamster’s tears

This is a nicey nice way to get smashed. Popular with teenager girls at sleepovers across the nation, coconut rum tastes charmingly like ice cream when mixed with coke. Sweeter than a young Miley Cyrus and with exactly the same amount of street-cred, Aldi fake Malibu is the lamest way to get drunk for under a fiver. But it’s so much more drinkable than shit cider!

Sainsbury’s Ginger Wine

You can tell it’s good cos it’s got the plastic hat you always forget to remove

This will change your life. Never in the history of man has there been a drink which so beautifully hits the right ratio of pretentiousness : alcohol content : price.

Amazingly, it’s only 5p more than the Basics red wine, but each of those p has gone a long way – the packaging is more aspirational and it tastes like ginger biscuits instead of vinegar and shame. Sainsbury’s have also stretched to a glass bottle. Cheerfully cheap, shamelessly quirky, the perfect complement to your vintage dungarees.

Please note, The Tab takes no responsibility for your drunken hoodlumism

The cheapskate smugness you’ll feel will alleviate the hangover. Trust me.