CSB - Michael Cooper - Wine Guru

This week with our wine guru, We talk the top of the line wines. a Battle between NZ and French wines. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Country Sport Breakfast with Brian Kelly on Gold Sport.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's time to catch up with our good friend Michael
Cooper to talk wines. Michael, good morning, Good morning Brian.
Now I believe recently you were involved with a blind
tasting on some top siras from Hawks Bay and Wahiqi Island,
along with Hermitage.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well, I must say, arguably the greatest wine I've ever
had in my life was from Hermitage in the Rhone
Valley of France. It was fifteen years old. It was
just absolutely in fact, it was so good. I shouldn't
admit this. I drink wine and moderation, but that particular
night I was here by myself during the school holidays

(01:02):
and the wine was just so unbelievably good. I drank
the whole bottle, and that's very unusual for me. But
I just said to myself, I'm going to cast caution
to the wind on this one night because this wine
is just so great. So just recently in Auckland, a
small group I belonged to we managed to get six

(01:23):
vintages of one of the most famous French red wines.
It's from the Hill of Hermitage in the Rhone Valley
and the shav family. They've been growing grapes on that
granite hill of Hermitage, believe it or not, since fourteen
eighty one. Trace it back our ancestors to forteen eighty one,

(01:45):
and so there's about twenty six generations or something of
the family who've been growing the Sararh grape. It's the
great the Aussies called Shiahs. They've been growing there since
forty eighty one. Now we're in New Zealand. We had
it with about eighteen ninety onwards, but we only got
serious about sarah and say the nineteen eighties onwards in
Hawk's Bay. But you can buy quite a few Hawk's

(02:08):
Bay and Waikki Island as Serrahs, and some of them
are quite expensive. And so we thought, well, just for
the fun of it, why don't we line up the
best of New Zealand versus the best of France. The
average price of the New Zealand wines, so we're really
talking top end here, about one hundred dollars when they
were on the market ten years ago, and of course

(02:31):
these French wines average price five hundred dollars, so it
was a really tough evening doing this.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Oh I bet all right, So I'd love to know
how we feared against the best of the French wines.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Well, the French one fairly decisively, but I think that's
not necessarily a negative thing, because the fact of the
matter is number one. On average, the French wines were
five times so you could argue that you could have
bought six of the New Zealand wines that were there
famous labels top end one hundred dollars. You could have

(03:04):
bought all six of those for just one bottle of
this shav hermitage. But also they've got a head start
on us of about five centuries, so we're doing pretty
well really, because because although my first, second, and third
wines were all the sharp hermitage from France, nevertheless I

(03:25):
was still you know, five stars, gold medal standard four
most of the New Zealand wines. But then they should
have been that good, because after all, you know, when
these wines were on the market ten years ago, the
Kiwi ones, you know, they were asking an average of
one hundred dollars a bottle, so they're still really classy wines.
But against the very greatest in the world, they were

(03:49):
slightly overshadowed.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right, so the French one comes out on top.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, well, certainly that's absolutely benchmark stuff. Unfortunately, it's the
whole you know, people who've got some money, they all
know it, and so they're quite happy to put the
price up to five hundred dollars a bottle. But at
least in this case, if you're feeling rich and you
want a special wine and you do buy, say a
Sharp Hermitage for a special occasion, at least it does deliver.

(04:15):
The wines are terrific. But the New Zealand examples from
wineries such as Trinity Hill, Tomato, Obsidian, Lacalina, Craggy Range,
Cable Bay. You know, they really are pretty competitive, and
most of them you can buy for you know, one
hundred dollars, not five hundred.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well there we go.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Fascinating though, absolutely fascinating. Michael, always great to chat. Let's
do it again next week. Thank you so much, great
Brian Brand. Imagine sitting down bottle of five hundred dollars
wine and one night on your own as the best
job in the world. Sixteen away, seven o'clock. This is

(05:01):
the country sport breakfast. It's gold sport.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Them