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Another round of QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) Hits and Misses, 12 QPR WINNERS – December 2025
With this post, I will be caught up on the Solar Calendar for 2025. This post is not as long as my last QPR (Quality-to-Price Ratio) post, but it still weighs in at 24 wines.
QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) Wines
It has been six or so months since my last QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) post, and many people have been emailing me about unique wines I have tasted and lovely wines that are worth writing about.
Thankfully, no matter how much garbage and pain I subject myself to, we are still blessed with several excellent QPR wines.
Throughout the year, I post many QPR posts for almost all of the main categories. I will continue down this road until I find a better way to categorize and track QPR WINNERS wines. People are still asking me what a QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) Wine is and what the score of WINNER denotes. Once again, those are explained here in this post.
Some things that made me stand up and take notice (AKA QPR WINNERS):
All of these wines come from the last three months of tasting in my home. All the other group tastings have been posted in other posts.
Liquid Kosher Wines
There are three wines from LiquidKosher here. The 2024 Weingut Gehring Roter Hang Riesling is solid. The 2024 Clos du Moulin Rosé and Blanc are both lovely wines. All three are QPR WINNERS. Again, these are not mind-blowing wines but they are enjoyable and they hit the mark.
Another Godin Wine Winner
We last tasted a few Godin wines last year, and now they have two new ones. One of them was a WINNER, the 2022 Godin Red Reserve, Douro, which is bright and not round. Hits the point – nice stuff!
Two Fantastic Domaine du Castel (Razi’el) Sparkling Wines
There are two sparkling wines here that are expensive, but they are also fantastic wines! Those are the N.V. Raziel Rose, Brut, and the N.V. Raziel Brut. Sadly, Yarden has taken a step back, and I think Raziel is taking their place! The Rose smells like a Burgundy red; it is shocking and glorious! The Brut smells on point and feels like what I want from a sparkling wine. Coming at these blind, they will not taste like Champagne, but they will taste very special, unique, and lovely! Bravo!
The Rest
The 2024 Shiloh Pinot Noir (NOT Mevushal) did shock me. I had it first at KWD, earlier this year, and having it in the house, to taste slowly and without the noise, allows one to appreciate what they are tasting. Still, it is/was much like what I remembered from that night, a solid Israeli option!
The 2024 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc is another hit from the Goose Bay label, and add to that the Pinot Noir I loved in Miami, and they are really putting together some excellent wines from 2024. This is bright, on point, and again a wine that is not overly New Zealand in nature. It has a hint of gooseberry, but not overly so, and I would think most people would not even guess it is from the tropics.
The highest-scoring wine here is the 2021 Aura di Valerie Barolo DOCG. It is an excellent wine. It tastes, smells, and acts like a Barolo, and it is really lovely! I recommend you guys go and get some before it’s all gone and you miss out! Enjoy!
The 2023 Château Puygueraud Francs is showing much better than it did the last time we had it in Paris. I think it has come into its own and is on point now.
The 2021 Chateau Pedesclaux, Pauillac, was a surprise for me. It takes a bit of time to show well, but even on opening, the minerality is shocking, and the pop is there!
The last wine is a retaste/repost with a different score. The 2022 Marchesi Fumeanelli Terso Vento Bianco, Veneto IGT, is such a wine. When we had it in September, it was an oak bomb, and while it did calm down that evening, the wine felt out of kilter to me. Tasting it again now, it does have the balance needed to join the WINNER circle.
Final Thoughts
OK, that is a wrap! I did not break out any other QPR categories beyond WINNER because the list of wines below does not really shine outside the WINNERS.
I have grouped all the QPR WINNER wines at the top. The rest of the wines are listed in the order they were tasted (AKA Timeline order). The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my quality “scores” can be found here, and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2021 Aura di Valerie Barolo DOCG, Barolo – Score: 93+ (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is incredible, dirty, earthy, musty, smoky, with rich red fruit, soy sauce, truffles, rich mushrooms, and dense smoke. Lovely! The mouth of this full-bodied wine takes time to open. GIVE THIS TIME, WOW, this wine is AWESOME! The fruit, the crazy acidity, the intense tannin structure, draping, elegant, smoky, dirty, with plush cherry, raspberry, and dense smoke. The finish is long, dirty, earthy, with more mushroom, soy sauce, saline, and minerality. WOW! Drink this from 2030 until 2037. (tasted November 2025) (in San Jose, CA) (ABV = 14.5%)
Three Merlot wines from Israel, two from France, Pacifica Cabernet, and one killer Herzog Napa Cab
I am really behind on my blog, as I have been busy with a new hobby which is taking up all of my time. Anyway, I wanted to highlight the meal we had two weeks ago which was in honor of my nephew and his beux leaving the area to go east. So in honor of them, I wanted to try a bunch of Israeli Merlot wines. Now, when people think of Israel, Merlot is not first on their mind, mostly because many do not appreciate Merlot, which is done incorrectly tastes bland and benign. That blandness and lack of character, was initially its draw, but over time, it was nuked both by the Sideways effect and by its sheer lack of anything fun. The folks in the know, would blank at Merlot from Israel, given the areas hot climate, which is counterproductive to making good Merlot.
The truth is that I have been talking about Merlot from Israel, but Merlot only from the Shomron region, a region that has found a way to harness what Israel has to offer and channel it into lovely and rich Merlot. The Shomron is becoming quite the up and coming wine region, much like the Judean Hills was some ten years ago. Now, Castel, Flam, Tzora, and many other wineries have made the Judean Hills a household name. I think the Shomron will soon follow in its next door neighbors footsteps, and come out from under the shadow of the Jerusalem hills to capture its own claim to fame; namely Merlot!
Merlot, as stated above has many needs, one is climate, two is proper drainage, and three is it needs careful vineyard management to control its vigor, nitrogen levels, and many other intricate issues that make Merlot a finicky grape, though not as maddening as its Sideways replacement Pinot Noir. As a total aside, the Sideways movie to me was far too vulgar and not to my taste, but there is a hidden joke in the movie that many miss. In the movie, the shlubby protagonist, Miles, screams afoul of Merlot and even disses Cabernet Franc, but especially extolls his love for all things Pinot Noir. Why did Miles love Pinot Noir so much, why go to great lengths to get his beloved nectar, well he defined right at the start:
“Um, it’s a hard grape to grow … it’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early … it’s not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it’s neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention … it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked- away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential can then coax it into its fullest expression.”
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