Author Archives: winemusings
The first Rose QPR WINNER, along with two other QPR Winners, and even more roses and whites from 2019, and a few Sparkling wines as well!
Sorry, it has been so long before I have posted here, but I am back and lets start with a few good wines and well, the rest of the 2019 wines white and rose wines that I could find.
QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) is the non-qualitative score I have been giving to wines recently. In my last update to QPR, a week after I posted the QPR revised methodology, I defined the QPR score of WINNER. A QPR score of WINNER is defined as a wine that scores a qualitative score of 91 or more, a score I define as a wine I would buy happily while also being a wine that is cheaper than the respective median wine category.
This week we have a mix of 27 wines 10 whites and 14 roses, and 3 Sparkling wines. One of the whites I have already posted about, a winner of the QPR GREAT score, the 2018 Domaine Netofa, White. The wine is a bit hit and miss and I wanted to update folks about it.
However, the absolute clear QPR WINNER of this week’s post is the FIRST 2019 Rose that gains the QPR WINNER title! Bravo!!! The wine is the 2019 Carmel Rose, Appellation. There were two other Sauvignon Blanc WINNERS, the 2019 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc (being released soon), and the 2019 Hagafen Sauvignon Blanc (Just released). 2019 white wine WINNERS are ALL Sauvignon Blanc and I am stocked!
The 2019 Teperberg Rose, Essence is another wine that got close to WINNER status, yet sadly, it did not, as the price is too high. This is a wine that should sell for less, like so many others from Isarel, yet that is just not the case.
The 2019 Herzog Rose, Pinot Noir, Tasting Room Reserve was a lovely wine for me. The weight and the acidity and the refreshingness of it really made it quite a fun wine indeed!
I continue to stand by my opinion that 2019 is one of the very WORST vintages for white and rose wines in the last 10 years for Israeli wines. I continue to dream of the 2013/2014 vintage for Israeli whites. Some of the very best Israeli whites came from the 2013/2014 vintages. Yes, I have not had as many of the 2019 whites and roses from Israel, as I would normally have had by now, sadly, the current circumstances do not let me do that. There are many roses still in France and Israel that I have not had, but of the ones I have had from Israel so far, I am fine with my statement.
Roses have continued to disappoint. We finally have a QPR WINNER for Rose, from Israel, but the vast majority of them this year have been an absolute letdown. There are now 8 QPR winners in whites (plus two in this post, and one from this post), it is clear as day to me that white wines are the way to go this summer.
Probably the saddest and maybe controversial wine note in this post is my score of the 2019 Chateau Riganes Blanc. What can I say, I did not love the wine. I LOVED the 2018 vintage! That wine had it all! The 2019 is just not as good and that is life sadly. I was really hoping for a repeat, like the 2019 Goose Bay Sauvignon did.
Finally, Royal has just released THREE newly disgorged Drappier Champagne! In this post I give you the score – it is AWESOME, I hope to taste the other two soon!
The wine note follows below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2019 Hajdu Rose – Score: 90+ (QPR: EVEN)
The 2019 Rose market has been so weak, it is nice to see Jonathan Hajdu and the Shirah brothers picking up the slack with their 2019 Roses, even if the QPR score is not as good as I would have wished for.
The nose on this wine is classic Cali rose notes, bright, sweet, ripe, yet well-balanced notes of blueberry, yes blue fruit, followed, by pomegranate, with raspberry, and sweet plum notes, this sounds riper/sweeter than I like, but it is more tart fruit than it is ripe fruit. The mouth on this medium-bodied plus rose is really fun, truly tart, refreshing, with great acidity, along with balanced sweet fruit, of blue fruit, tart strawberry, raspberry, grapefruit, sweet/tart collage of nice plum, strawberry, sweet and tart strawberry, and really tart red peach. The finish is long, sweet, tart, with nice mineral, body, freshness, and refreshing qualities that are truly a lovely summer wine – Bravo!
We have a new white wine QPR WINNER and some other roses
Another week and another batch of white and rose wines to enjoy. The summer is quickly approaching and while we have yet to find a single QPR WINNER in the world of kosher 2019 roses, we have some new entries.
QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) is the non-qualitative score I have been giving to wines recently. In my last update to QPR, a week after I posted the QPR revised methodology, I defined the QPR score of WINNER. A QPR score of WINNER is defined as a wine that scores a qualitative score of 91 or more, a score I define as a wine I would buy happily while also being a wine that is cheaper than the respective median wine category.
This week we have a mix of 7 wines 3 whites and 4 roses. One of the whites I have already posted about, a winner of the QPR GREAT score, the 2018 Koenig Riesling, Alsace. The wine is lovely and well worth the effort to find it and buy it.
However, the absolute clear QPR WINNER of this week’s post is the FIRST 2019 wine that gains the QPR WINNER title! Bravo!!! The wine is the 2019 O’Dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc. The 2018 O’Dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc was not a wine I liked while the 2017 O’Dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc was a solid WINNER, even when we did not have the WINNER QPR category at that time.
NOTE: I state the 2019 O’Dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc is the FIRST 2019 WINNER because even though the 2019 Herzog Sauvignon Blanc, Lineage, I listed in my last post, it is not actually available yet.
The 2019 Domaine Netofa Rosado, Latour, is another wine that got close to WINNER status, yet sadly, it did not. A nice wine, but with the price and score it received a solid QPR score of GOOD.
In an interesting twist, the Domaine Netofa Rose, which comes in at 7 dollars below the Latour Rose price, is not as good but given its price is below the Median for rose wines it has a better QPR score. There lies the issue of cost! Either we are going to bend to the needs of higher quality at all costs or we will go with slightly lower quality for less money. Sadly, for 2019 Roses that is LITERALLY our story! There are NO QPR WINNER roses, at least so far, 2019 is one of those years. The rest is a hodgepodge of QPR scores.
I continue to stand by my opinion that 2019 is one of the very WORST vintages for white and rose wines in the last 10 years for Israeli wines. I continue to dream of the 2013/2014 vintage for Israeli whites. Some of the very best Israeli whites came from the 2013/2014 vintages. Yes, I have not had as many of the 2019 whites and roses from Israel, as I would normally have had by now, sadly, the current circumstances do not let me do that. There are many roses still in France and Israel that I have not had, but of the ones I have had from Israel so far, I am fine with my statement.
Roses, so far this year have been an absolute letdown and honestly, without a SINGLE QPR WINNER in roses and 8 QPR winners in whites, it is clear as day to me that white wines are the way to go this summer (and the 19 days from now before that)!
The wine note follows below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2019 O’dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 91+ (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is below the median price line, so this wine SHOULD get a score of GREAT for QPR. However, it is ALSO one of the few white wines that score at least a 91, and that has a price that is below the median price line, so this wine gets the coveted score of WINNER for QPR. Bravo!!!
Lovely notes of passion fruit, incredible cat pee, gooseberry, and loads green notes for the cat to pee on, with incredible saline, such a wonderful and classic New Zealand nose. This is a very fruity, yet extremely well-balanced New Zeland Sauvignon Blanc, it is more tropical than the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc, but also more New Zeland – in nature. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is lovely. well balanced, with good acidity, extremely refreshing, with loads of grapefruit, guava, passion fruit, lemon/lime, and lovely loads of crazy tart gooseberry, and incredible slate. The finish is long, green, with lovely salt, intense saline, rock, and more citrus. Bravo! Drink until 2024. Read the rest of this entry
Easy drinking white wines for 2020 – better than I expected
Well, the roses from the 2019 vintage, so far, are not inspiring, and initially, I thought the same for the white wines, thankfully, as I tasted through the last 15 bottles of wines things shifted. There is a reason why I have been pushing Price in relation to its quality, AKA QPR (Quality to Price Relationship).
For this tasting, I tasted more than 70 wines, however, I posted only some 49 wine notes here. Rest assured, the others were either not worthy or I did not have detailed enough notes to make it here on this post.
Interestingly, initially, I had zero hope for the white wines, much as I felt about the roses. However, all of this is data-driven and other than my wines notes, the rest is all prices defined by the USA market. The more, I tasted, the more I felt that there are options in the simple white wine category. I was really ready to give up hope, but thankfully, folks like Shirah, Kos Yeshuos, and other Europen wines really pulled their weight. Sadly, of the top 27 wines, there were a total of 11 from 2019. Of them, only two were from Israel. The rest hailed from California, France, and New Zealand. In the end, so far, the vast majority of the Israeli white wines I have tasted from 2019 are also highly uninspiring.
With that said, the median price for the wine category of non-aging white wines is going up! There lies in my over-arching issue, prices keep going up!! The median price for non-aging white wines, here in the USA, is now 24 dollars! Seriously!! COME ON!! This is crazy! As the kids say, total Cray Cray! Turned around, the total number of wines below the median price of 24 dollars that received a 90 or higher was 12, and many of those are our QPR WINNERS. Overall, 2019 is still a dud in Israel, of those that have made their way to the USA, and Califonia is saving the day, so far.
All the wines here are scored both quantitatively, AKA using my classic wine score described here, and using the newly revised QPR score described here. So, yes, there will be more of the QPR discussion that will arise from this post. Thankfully, we have a good number of wines, 7 from my count, that received the QPR score of WINNER, sadly, they are mostly from 2018. Therefore, I repeat again, I am highly unimpressed with how many 2019 white wines I had and how many are subpar. Please be careful with the ones you buy.
Finally, in order of price, the first of the 7 QPR WINNER wines come in at wine #38, sorted by price! That means there are loads of other wines far less interesting than the 2018 Ramon Cardova Albarino, the most expensive of the 7 WINNER QPR wines. This is the kind of data that makes me scream. This is what needs to change! Wineries are willing to produce wines that are more expensive and less interesting, than more than HALF of the wine I tasted! This is what needs to change, kosher wine has gotten out of control, price-wise.
Do yourself a favor, check the price, you do it for everything else you buy! Check the wine, check the price, and then decide!
The wine note follows below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2018 Ramon Cardova Albarino, Rias Baixas – Score: 92 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is just below the median price line, so this wine SHOULD get a score of GREAT for QPR. However, it is ALSO one of the few white wines that score at least a 91, and that has a price that is below the median price line, so this wine gets the coveted score of WINNER for QPR. Bravo!!!
The 2018 vintage of this Albarino, in its second vintage, shows less tropical and ripe than the first vintage, 2017. This bottle also had the thermal active label, and it shows up when the bottle is at the proper drinking temperature. My only REAL and serious complaint is the cork, why would Royal waste the money and my money of a real cork? Use a Diam or any other amalgamated cork, like almost everyone else is. I really hope I do not hit a bad cork for the wines I have.
The nose on this wine is better than the 2017 vintage, Lovely nose of rich mineral, with loads of straw, with which salinity, and lovely peach and dry pear, with honeysuckle, gooseberry, along with green notes galore. Lovely! The mouth on this lovely green and acid-driven wine has a more oily mouthfeel than the 2017 vintage, showing rich salinity, green olives, with lovely dry quince, green apples, more peach, green apple, but also with lovely lime and grapefruit, no sense of guava or melon-like on the 2017 vintage, with a tinge of orange notes. The overall mouth is lovely and it comes at you in layers. The finish is long, green, with gooseberry, tart fruit, with an incredible freshness, and orange pith, slate, rock, and incredible acidity lingering long. Incredible!! Bravo!! Drink until 2022.
2018 Hagafen Dry Riesling – Score: 91 (Mevushal) (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is below the Median price line, so this wine gets a GREAT score for QPR. However, it is ALSO one of the few white wines that score at least a 91, and that has a price that is below the median price line, so this wine gets the coveted score of WINNER for QPR. Bravo!!!
The nose on this wine is tropical and sweet fruit-focused, with pineapple, guava, melon, peach, but now THANKFULLY the petrol is in full gear, and it commands your attention, with the tropical fruit still very present, along with some nice mineral. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is fun, tart, nice acidity, with more petrol funk, showing nice balance, with good acidity, still, the mouth is sweet and ripe, the petrol and tart notes help, with green apple, tart grapefruit, tart stone fruit, and slate galore, with waxy notes, and tart pineapple. The finish is long, green, with intense mineral, slate, flint, and lovely petrol that gives way to nice acidity, and hints of tannin. The wine has indeed come around and now petrol is more present and the hole in the middle is gone. Drink until 2024. Read the rest of this entry
2018 Elvi Wines Invita – OOPS! I mean 2018 Elvi Wines Herenza White – the first white wine QPR WINNER of 2020
So, I just posted my amendment to the QPR methodology, by adding a new value called WINNER. The first deserving recipient of the WINNER QPR score is the 2018 Elvi Wines Herenza White (A.K.A. Invita of old).
I love the new label, and no that does not go into either score. I guess the new name is good for marketing, but to me, it will always be the Invita!
The wine is lovely, a bit less acidic at the attack than when I had it Feb 2019 when we tasted a vertical of 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Invita wines on the party bus, but still a very lovely wine indeed! Also, this wine does age well, but it is right on the line of ageable and non-ageable white wines, with a 2025 drinking window. Either way, it gets the score of WINNER by 10 dollars or by 25 or so dollars (I have not calculated the ageable wine median price yet).
Bravo to Elvi Wines for making lovely wines that are really great and that are reasonably priced! This is what we need much more of! Bravo, my friends! There are truly very few new wines that will get the QPR score of WINNER in the white wine category, this year. Last year we had many more white wines that both received a 91 score and were below the median price. Bravo!!
You guys are so well deserving of the WINNER QPR score! To be 100% fair, the FIRST WINNER of 2020 was the 2018 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico wine that I reviewed here, but I did not amend the WINNER value until after I posted it. Still, both are well deserving! Also, the Chianti is red wine and this Herenza white is the first white wine with the WINNER QPR score. I have warned you, buy it now, do not blame me when it sells out.
The wine note follows below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2018 Elvi Wines Herenza White, Alella – Score: 91 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is well below the median price line, so this wine SHOULD get a score of GREAT for QPR. However, it is ALSO one of the few white wines that score at least a 91, and that has a price that is below the median price line, so this wine gets the coveted score of WINNER for QPR. Bravo!!!
The wine is a blend of something like 60% Pansa Blanca and 40% Sauvignon Blanc. The nose on this wine is closed, with time it opens to show beautiful tart fruit, really nice mineral, with mango galore, lovely impressive funk, white peach, with loads of hay and mineral, with citrus and mad orange blossom. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is oily and richer in mouthfeel, but sadly, not as acidic as I remember it from last year, still nice and balanced, with tart pink grapefruit, followed by orange fruit, yellow plum, and beautiful orange blossom. The finish is super long, tart, and juicy, super well balanced, showing more acidity on the finish than on the front of the wine, with fun mineral, more funk lingering long, along with flint, and pith. WOW! Drink from 2020 until 2025.
QPR Score revision 2.1, amended slightly with a new value – WINNER
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.
The 2020 Kosher rose season is open and once again I am underwhelmed – part 1
It is not yet summer but here in NorCal, it feels more like summer than spring, and the weather is making shipments really hard at this time of year. Normally, I would have been in Israel by now, one way or the other, and I would have at least had two tastings with the gang. Sadly, with the times we live in now, neither of those wonderful ideas is possible. Sad and strange days we live in. Also, this is round 1, there will be another 15 roses I will get through over the next week or so.
While rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France, the kosher market this year will be more subdued. In the past, distributors brought in as much as 60+ kosher rose wines, this year with the issues I brought up in my previous post – there is less of an appetite for all those wines.
QPR and Price
I have been having more discussions around my QPR score with a few people and their contention, which is fair, in that they see wine at a certain price, and they are not going to go above that. So, instead of having a true methodology behind their ideas, they go with what can only be described as a gut feeling. The approaches are either a wine punches above its weight class so it deserves a good QPR score. Or, this other wine has a good score and is less than 40 dollars so that makes it a good QPR wine.
While I appreciate those ideals, they do not work for everyone and they do NOT work for all wine categories. It does NOT work for roses. Look, rose prices are 100% ABSURD – PERIOD! The median rose price has gone up this year and it is around 22 bucks – that is NUTS! Worse, is that the prices are for online places like kosherwine.com or onlinekosherwine.com, with free or good shipping options and great pricing, definitely not retail pricing.
As you will see in the scores below, QPR is all over the place and there will be good QPR scores for wines I would not buy while there are POOR to BAD QPR scores for wines I would think about buying, based upon the scores, but in reality, I would never buy another bottle because the pricing is ABSURDLY high.
Also, remember that the QPR methodology is based upon the 4 quintiles! Meaning, that there is a Median, but there are also quintiles above and below that median. So a wine that is at the top price point is by definition in the upper quintile. The same goes for scores. Each step above and below the median is a point in the system. So a wine that is in the most expensive quintile but is also the best wine of the group gets an EVEN. Remember folks math wins!
Still, many of the wines have a QPR of great and I would not buy them, why? Well, again, QPR is based NOT on quality primarily, it is based upon price. The quality is secondary to the price. So, wines that are drinkable with an 88 or 89 score, though wines that I would not buy, have a low enough price to get a GOOD or GREAT score. Does that mean that I would buy them because they have a GREAT QPR? No, I would not! However, for those that really want roses, then those are solid options.
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.
Finally, I can, and I have, cut and paste the rest of this post from last year’s rose post and it plays 100% the same as it did last year. Why? Because rose again is horrible. There is almost no Israeli rose, that I have tasted so far, that I would buy – no way! Now, I have not tasted the wines that many think are good in Israel, the Netofa, Vitkin, and Recanati roses. Yes, there is ONE rose I would “buy” by my qualitative scoring approach, which is why I used the word almost above. That wine would be the 2019 Bat Shlomo Rose, but at some 28 or more dollars a bottle, it is highway robbery for that score. Read the rest of this entry
Terra di Seta keeps on crushing it with another great QPR wine – the 2015 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, Gran Selezione, Assai
Another week and another home run by Terra Di Seta. Last week I posted how the 2018 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico was a great QPR wine and this week it is the same story, different wine. This week we are talking about the 2015 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, Gran Selezione, Assai.
Many people know this wine as the Assai wine, but that is kind of like knowing Mike Trout as a baseball player and not one of the best, but really quiet, baseball players on the planet. The point here is that yes, Terra di Seta called this wine Assai, but it is a Chianti Classico Gran Selezione! This is not a simple or trifle matter. Sadly, this is the only kosher Chianti Classico, Gran Selezione, but thankfully, it happens to be a great wine, year after year, other than the 2012 vintage, which I was not a fan of.
Interestingly, Chianti Classico Gran Selezione only came into reality a few years ago, 2014 to be exact. Terra di Seta’s first Chianti Classico Gran Selezione, was in 2011, which was 30 months prior to 2014 when the new D.O.C.G designation came into reality. The rules for Chianti Classico Gran Selezione are simple. First, the vines have to be the best of the best of the winery’s vines that MUST be inside of Chinati Classicop’s region. Next, it must have aged in the cellar for 30 months. That does NOT mean the wine was aged 30 months in barrels, what it means is that it must lie in the cellar, whether in barrel or bottle for at least 30 months. Also, there are some non-kosher wines that have the Gran Selezione designation for wines made back in 2007 and maybe earlier. All it means is that the winery followed the requirements that meet the designation, even if the destination was not in effect at that time.
Drinking Window
This wine may well have been released now, but please, I beg you not to drink it. It is not even close to being ready. I have the window opening in three years and I do not think it will be enough. It may require 2024 to be a good starting window. This wine is painfully young, the tannin, acidity, and overall structure, and yes, the fruit, are unbearable. I do not mind drinking young wines, but this wine scared me to no end. The fruit was so overbearing within the first 12 hours that it was shocking. My notes are all down below, you can clearly read how shocked I was. However, once the wine’s aromas and fruitiness calmed down, the brilliance of Chianti Classico came through. Beware of the drinking window PLEASE!
QPR Greatness
So, before, I sign off on this post and drop the score and wine notes, I will once again bring up the subject of QPR, a post that keeps on giving. These past two wine posts, both from terra di Seta, are the perfect examples for what QPR is all about, and how my new scoring system works. Read the rest of this entry
Cantina Terra di Seta continues its stranglehold on the QPR mountaintop with the 2018 Cantina Terra di Seta Chianti Classico
Well, it is another quarter and sure enough Cantina Terra di Seta has another great wine for sale, this time it is the 2018 Cantina Terra di Seta Chianti Classico. This wine in many ways shows better than the 2015 Cantina Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, it is more balanced, shows more acidity, and has crazy earth. Another home run by the folks who won the Inaugural Winery of the Year award and are well on their way to making another run at QPR wine or winery of the year. Bravo to Daniele Della Seta and his wife Maria Pellegrini! Keep up the great work!!
The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2018 Cantina Terra di Seta Chianti Classico – Score: 92 to 93 (QPR: GREAT)
This is a fantastic wine, and with my new QPR scoring it is still is not as expensive as the median and its score is also above the median, so it is a GREAT QPR. This is a no brainer GREAT QPR wine and will sell out quickly BUY NOW!
This wine is incredible, it is better than the 2016 vintage and much better than 2017. It is even a bit better than the massively epic 2015 vintage. Bravo Daniella and Maria!!!
The nose on this wine is ripe, but the balance on it is incredible, the fruitiness exists but it hides behind a redolent garden of fresh mushroom, grass, dirt, loam, and lovely earth, with hints of barnyard, forest floor, and dark fruit, with balsamic vinegar, and roasted herbs galore. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is incredible, layered, rich, extracted, and so balanced, with incredible acidity, intense saline, dark sour cherry, coffee, all balanced and plush, with rich blackberry, cherry, strawberry, salami, with lovely mouth draping tannin, with minerality, graphite galore, and a lovely tannin structure. The finish is long, green, and ripe but perfectly balanced, with lovely acidity, roasted coffee, graphite, scarping mineral, loads of smoke, and sweet tobacco on the long finish. Bravo!! Drink until 2027 maybe longer.
The kosher wine business in the new Coronavirus world
Well, my part of California is locking us away for another month and I thought it was high time to talk a bit about the kosher wine industry in light of the situation we are all facing – the Coronavirus.
Kosher Wine business
This is not rocket science, us jews are not drinkers. Relax, I know some of you are tipplers, but the vast majority of the kosher wine world drinks on the weekend, no matter how much certain people complain about it.
Now, that is predicated on the theory that we are home and such. However, when we are invited to a party, wedding, dinner, etc. (remember those things where we actually sat next to someone that was not your wife or child)?? Yeah, in those settings we drink, it is simple, and yes, we may drink more than we expect, because well, we are out for an occasion. It is the common trait of most Jews I know. Throw in a dinner, event, party, and yeah, Jews drink, but we are still moderates.
Now, throw in restaurants, business dinners, evenings out with your wife or friend and we get a fair amount of wine/alcohol action.
Sadly, these events, these dinners, they do not come back when this insanity is over, we cannot make up for it. This is lost revenue that is not coming back. The longer people stay in the house, the longer we are locked up, the longer caterers, restaurants, and wine producers/importers will be in pain. The weddings may come back, those Mosdos/organizational dinners you hated going to may also make a rebound, but I do not see it coming back to the levels we saw in the past any time soon. Restaurants may not come back either and I think two things will change for the next few years:
- Mevushal wine will take a hit. This is not a new thing IMHO. The kosher wine world has been pushing this so hard recently that I think many have either become numb to it or have given up hope for change. With the lack of public occasions for the next two years, minimally, we will see a huge drop in Mevushal wine interest, and I feel no sadness, it is time for the kosher wine world to move on. This will affect Israeli Mevushal more than say the few Cali or french that exist. Cali means Herzog and their Mevushal is irrelevant IMHO, I buy their wines and I never think Mevushal at all. Israel though will feel this the most I fear.
- Home Delivery is on the rise and it will not stop anytime soon. The recent events will seriously change the way people see wine buying in the future. No, the average New Yorker will still go to his/her local shop, but there will be fewer. I have heard it over and over by the online wine guys – NYC was a large buyer these past months, and that will not come to a screaming halt in the future. It will slow, but there will be lingering and residual folks who continue buying online, and that is a GREAT thing. The power of the local wine shop is seriously bad and it is time for the kosher wine industry to be further democratized, with better information and better selection. I see this in the USA and not so much in Israel for many reasons. Europe has been delivering wines for decades already and I do not see a huge shift there either.
- No matter how much wine you THINK you are drinking and no matter how much you think you are buying, the wine importers are in pain. There is ZERO need to cry for Royal wines, they could care less about what is happening, they have the food business and they are run with extreme efficiency.
We do need to care about what happens next for the other importers. The majority of the wine they sell is not to people’s homes. It is for dinners, restaurants, caterers, and so on. With all that out of commission, for the time being, we really have to pray for the welfare of the kosher wine importers, if this goes on for as long as I fear we may lose a few and that is not such a good thing when all that means is that Royal will get bigger. - QPR will mean more going forward. Look, I have received a fair amount of feedback from my last post, and thanks. That said, I have heard from more than a few about how their ability to buy has been curtailed and that they are on a tighter budget than in the past. People are suffering unless you work in grocery, healthcare, hi-tech, they are in a less comfortable place. Lawyers have fewer clients, the same goes for CPAs. The famous Jewish jobs are not all they are cut up to be in this particular environment. Many business owners have no access or ability to run their businesses. This is a crazy world we live in and people will be looking for more affordable wines.
Hence, QPR is the answer and yes, I think as I roll it out more you will see wines that you did not expect to be so interesting become more valuable, given where some are today financially. - Wine sales will slow on the higher prices and the French wines will sell but even slower. Look now, 2016 is on the shelves everywhere when 2017 in the vintage in question. The 2015s are almost all gone and a few of the higher-priced 2014s linger. This will pass, but I hope it does not impact Royal and others. The main goal is to have wines for sale not to be sold out of wines.
Having an empty warehouse of fewer French wines is not a victory it is a loss for all. Making less of the wine, producing controlled amounts, numbers, where everyone gets a shot to buy but also balancing the book, is the correct manner to approach a sustainable longterm business in the world of wine that lasts a generation.
We have Royal, IDS, and others to thank for the plethora of great wines to enjoy. This will be a blip on the long term screen of life, a painful, unfortunate, sad episode, but a blip none the less. One cannot make a year-by-year decision on wine production, especially, when you have such good relationships with wineries and the industry as a whole.
Overall, the industry will change and people’s buying habits may shift a bit, but a time will come when importers will need to look at the non-kosher world and ask, why do they sell 2014 and 2015 vintages of Giscours at the same time? Because they are different wines, very different, and buyers know it. Soon, Royal and IDS will have a pipeline of continuous vintages from some wineries in France and elsewhere throughout Europe, and having vintages back to back on the shelf is a badge of honor not a badge of shame or poor salesmanship.
The kosher market does not need to blaze new trails we need to start to appreciate what we have and what wonderful worlds of wine we have been given the chance to enjoy.
I hope everyone is well, healthy, safe, and taking a moment to appreciate the family we have around us. Prayers continue for those less fortunate and I hope they are all answered quickly with good tidings.
QPR Scoring on kosher wine musings explained – revised (2.0)
So, my buddy, Avi Davidowitz of Kosher Wine Unfiltered, and I have been harping on the absurd price of wines in the kosher wine world. I do it yearly, in my year in reviews. I have also done it, in a positive light, in my QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) wine posts. Avi does it on every score by baking the QPR score into the qualitative score itself, but by also calling out whether he would buy the wine again or not.
However, over the past couple of months, I have personally spent an absurd amount of money to taste wines and they were all a waste of my money. Now, while that is my own personal cross to bear, it is getting out of control. Kosher wine prices continue to rise and the values continue to plummet. I literally, screamed about this in my year in review.
However, until this point, all I have been doing is preaching this subject, and extolling the good, in regards to the QPR score. It has come time to make clear what is a logical buy and what is illogical.
Quality to Price Ratio Valuation
Now, to be clear, just because a wine is 150 dollars it does not make it a good wine, and that is clear by the wine’s score, and score alone, whose methodology I define here. I am NOT going to change my wine scores, those are qualitative in nature and need no new tweaking. If a distributor or winery, or BOTH, wants to price a GREAT wine at 200 dollars that is their prerogative.
Value is defined in the dictionary to mean: the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something. Far too many people hold something in high regard based upon its price or its label or other such characteristics. That is not an objective or even a logically subjective approach or methodology for defining value or regard for an item’s worth, in the world of wine.
Initially, there have been many drafts of this post and methodology, the focus was on price, and even I fell into that mistake. In the end, value, as it is defined below works for any price point.
So, stated simply, the QPR score is based SOLELY on the wine’s qualitative score and its price in comparison to other wines with equal or greater quality scores, within the same wine category. Simple. Read the rest of this entry
