CSB - Michael Cooper - Wine

Our weekly wine chat with the Guru. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A country Sport Breakfast with Brian Kelly on gold Sporting.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Our wine chat is going to be about organically certified
wines with Michael Cooper. Morning. Michael Morning, Brian, tell me
about it organically organic wines. First off, is there a
large percentage of organic wines grown in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
It's relatively low, but it's certainly growing. There's about a
bit over seven hundred wine producers in the country now
and just over ten percent of them are certified organic
for at least part of their output. So for some
particularly smaller producers, they may go fully organic. But some

(00:51):
of the big companies, for example Brancotta State or Villa Maria,
they might have one or two ranges of wines that
are organic wild well, the majority of their production is
still not organic.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
When you say certified, and then who certifies and what
does that mean?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, well that's the key thing because there are a
lot of people out there who claim their products, not
just wine but others, are organic. But I tend to
ignore those claims unless they're being certified, because they claiming
organic status can come with a bit of status and
conceivably enable you to command a higher price. But if

(01:26):
you haven't been certified. How do you know that you
can believe it? The main certifying agency in New Zealand,
Brian is Buyo Grow. And so for listeners who want
to try organic wines, what I suggest is just pick
the bottle up off the shelf and have a look
at the back label and look for the biogrow logo.

(01:50):
And that's a really instant guide too. The ones that
we can trust have been closely checked and can be
guaranteed to be, you know, truly of organic status.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
So being organic wine, what does it mean?

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Well, that's a good question. The key thing is that
what gets banned chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides and chemical herbicides.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
So no chemicals.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, And so New Zealand in the past, you know,
every two weeks people used to hook their you know,
sprays up to the back of that tractor and go
through the vineyards and just spraying on a regular basis.
And it was really particularly in the wetter areas where
there was a great need to protect the grapes from disease.

(02:43):
It was sort of widely viewed by international standards that
we had a bit of a problem there. And what
I notice is as you go down the country where
you know, particularly on the East coast, where you know
the weather generally is a bit drier, you tend to
get an increased likelihood that a producer will be organic.
So by the time you get the central Otago, where
it's typically quite dry, you know there are a lot

(03:06):
of organic producers down there.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
So does organic wine taste better than normal wine?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Juries out on that, I looked at a couple of
major studies. There was a huge study done in the
United States which was based on Believe it or Not,
seventy four thousand, one hundred and forty eight reviews. Now,
these were California wines that had been reviewed in the
United States is leading wine specialist magazines, and these wines

(03:40):
tasted over more than a decade, so that's how they
got up to the seventy four thousand, and what they
found was agreement among experts that organic wines are of
better quality. So that sounds good. But in just two
years ago, there was an analysis in Spain, and apparently
in Spain they've got a very influential annual Spanish Wine Guide,

(04:04):
but that focuses mainly on the wines that are in
large volume, and that wine lovers can buy, you know,
in supermarkets quite readily. And they analyzed three hundred and
four reviews in twenty twenty two and their conclusion was,
quote expert tasters race, they rate non organic wines higher.

(04:27):
So those expert tasters in Spain preferred the wines that
weren't organic and when they didn't know the identity of
the one or whether it was organic or not, whereas
in California they reached the dead opposite conclusion. So I'll
keep listening post.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
All right, have you got a wine of the week?
Is it an organic wine?

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, so we just mentioned a couple two differans. One
is love Block and one is Villa Maria Earth Garden.
For Sauvignon Bloc lovers, I would suggest love Block Molds
Blanc twenty twenty two, which is probably in full full
stride right now. It's two years old, ready to roll
twenty two dollars. It was grown in the Aritarry Valley

(05:10):
estate grown and it was handled mainly in stain of
steel tanks, but they've also used a whole range of
other vessels like clay m four eye and concrete egg
shaped tanks and old oat barrels and all of that's
just added a bit of complexities the wine. It's got
good depth of tropical fruit and herbal flavors. It's got

(05:31):
racy acidity, and it's got a slightly off dry finish.
So that's a good introduction to organic Sovinion Bloc Love
Block Marlbra Savin Bloc twenty twenty two. And then for
Chardonnay lovers, I would recommend Villa Maria Earth Garden Hawks
Bay Chardonnay twenty twenty two. That's twenty five dollars. It's

(05:52):
full body, fleshy, weighty, got good you know, mouthfield and
sort of quite stewdy in the mouth. Full bodied, and
it's got nice ripe peachy fruit flavors in the foreground.
It's got some sort of oak and savory and butterscotch
notes which add you know, an extra dimension. It's got
finely balanced facidity and a dry, harmonious finish, so it's

(06:15):
already drinking well. That's Billa Maria Earthgarden Hawks Bay two.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Michael, great to chat. Learned quite a bit there this morning.
Thank you for joining us, and we'll do it next week.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
All is the dark and the main they play here
in Brinon weird, my little or