Well, yes, I am on a warpath this year, and I am using math to prove that the prices of kosher wines are out of control. This year so far, we have no roses that I would give a QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) score of WINNER. This is a slight revision to my QPR 2.0 post, and I have already amended that post with the WINNER value.

Please look back at my QPR revised 2.0 post. I have been getting a lot of comments on people’s feelings. The overarching interests by many are that I am focusing too much on cost, which I am 100% happy about, as that is a fact that needs serious focus.

I repeat what I stated in my year in review, for something like 7 years now, LOL! We need quality wines AND we need them at a reasonable price. The QPR score is exactly what is says – QUALITY to Price Ratio. The qualitative score is the priority, but if that nice and highly scored wine is more expensive than its peers, it is not a good QPR wine. Simple.

So to stress what I have stressed on my last 4 posts about this subject – here I go again!

Please remember, a wine score and the notes are the primary reason why I would buy a wine – PERIOD. The QPR score is there to mediate, secondarily, which of those wines that I wish to buy, are a better value. ONLY, the qualitative score can live on its own, in regards to what I buy. The QPR score defines, within the wine category, which of its peers are better or worse than the wine in question.

Said in other words. Buy high scoring wines – DONE! Now, if you want to know which of those high scoring wines is a good deal – well look at the QPR scores. DONE!

Rose wine QPR scores graphed out

To make this simple there are no rose wines, that I have tasted so far, this year that I would consider a winner. The winner quintile is the gradient blue box and it is empty. It was close-ish. The 2019 Cantina Giuliano Costa Rosato came in under the median line (the y-axis) but not over or equal to the 91 point score that I need from a wine before I think about buying it. The same goes for the 2019 Chateau Roubine Rose, La Vie, it is a fine wine which garnered a score of 91, but it costs more than the Median price of 22 dollars. Therefore, there are no winners in the kosher rose market, for me, so far, this year. This chart looks akin to the Gartner magic quadrant, but where they are shooting for the upper right quintile, here, we are looking for the lower right quintile, as we want lower-priced wines that have solid scores.

The next post I drop, God Willing, will be the white wines for 2020, and that has a few winners, but that is also because the prices are st STUPID high that some wines can sneak in under the absurdly high Median price! Still, PRIORITY is white wines with a score of 91. So far, there are just TWO new white wines, that are from the 2019 vintage, which has garnered a 91 score. They are BOTH Californian wines and only ONE will get the coveted QPR WINNER score. The other Californian 2019 white wine will get a QPR score of GOOD, which is well good!

Last year, in 2019, we had at least 6 new whites that were under 20 dollars and that scored 91 points or more. The N.V. Gilgal Brut, 2018 Ramon Cardova Albarino, 2018 Chateau Riganes, 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc, 2017 Herzog Chardonnay, Lineage, and the 2018 Or Haganuz Amuka White. We also had the 2018 Elvi Wines Invita, but it was not officially here, that, of course, has been fixed thankfully, and it is on the new list. The 2017 Albarino was below 20, I think the 2018 vintage went up in price afterward. I hope we will find more wines that are worthy of our dollars and our time.

In closing, quality reigns supreme, but as many people have told me this week alone, prices for kosher wines are too high. Very few people can buy the wines from my Top Flight Wines, in my Passover wine list for 2020, even the Yarden Rose Brut has been going up in price consistently.  Again, thankfully we have good wines to enjoy, but they should not be for the few! Sorry, that needs to change.