Michael Cooper releases new Buyer’s Guide & Wine Atlas of NZ January 2009
Known for years as the moustachioed mouthpiece of the New Zealand wine industry, the whiskery walrus of wine knowledge, the ginger-haired ghost that lurks in the shadows waiting to pounce on the unjust or slightly suss on behalf of innocent wine consumers across the nation. He is the high wizard of wine writing, the Gandalf of good booze-buying. He is Michael Cooper. And I almost didn’t recognise him as I lined up inside Church Road’s Tom MacDonald Cellar last week during the Hawkes Bay leg of Cooper’s national tour to promote the release of his 2009 Buyers Guide to NZ Wine (17th Edition) and the 2nd edition of the Wine Atlas of New Zealand. He’s clean-shaven now, “and looking decades younger,” I said, angling for a free copy.
“The first Buyers Guide took us all by complete surprise because it sold 11,000 copies!” He said
to the gathered wine producers and media, “so that told me there was a very real need for a book like that, which was a collection of tasting notes that gave buyers guidance”. He’s certainly not wrong there, with sales maintaining ever since. “I’m pretty lucky as a writer because there’s this incredible interest in the topic. The other good thing is that you can go and write it again next year. You couldn’t do that if you decided to write the history of the Roman Empire could you!” The point of the Buyers Guide, according to Cooper is not to answer all the questions about wine, but to answer just one, and that is ‘should I buy it?’
Cooper examines the subject of value very closely in his writing and much kudos is placed on his ‘Best Buy’ recommendations. This year Mission Estate’s Hawkes Bay Reserve Syrah 2007 took top honours “and it’s only $23!” Cooper urged, “It outclassed wines double that price” he said, mentioning that validation of his decision soon came with the wine achieving three gold medals in quick succession at various shows around the country.
He takes great pride in the fact that New Zealand syrah is becoming something of a star internationally. “Wine State Magazine recently organised a tasting of 800 syrah from around the world, of which more than a hundred were from New Zealand, 650-plus would’ve been Australian and the magazine also bought in some of the top syrah from the Rhone. The editor rang me all excited after the tasting saying “Michael, do you realise out of the top 10 wines, two were from New Zealand?” and he just couldn’t understand why I didn’t sound surprised” he laughed. “I think he thought he was ‘breaking the news’ but I feel, here in New Zealand it’s pretty well known that our syrah is internationally extremely competitive”.
Cooper’s first edition of the Wine Atlas of New Zealand in 2002 provided the highlight of his career by winning the Supreme Award for Non-Fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. “It stirred up a bit of controversy because a lot of snotty literary people came out of the woodwork and criticised the judges for giving the award to a book about wine because it normally goes to a work of history or biography. However the judges had to look at the effect the book had on the community, and they discovered that wine is now a very important part of our culture. And just look at the way it’s transformed some of our regions” he added.
“I didn’t see why a book about New Zealand Wine couldn’t be as good as the great books written about Bordeaux or California or Italy. And the whole idea of the ‘Atlas is to put between two covers the answers to pretty much any question anyone could have on New Zealand wine” he explains, with the “heart” of the book being the profiles of what he believes are “significant wineries” in New Zealand.
Wine Atlas Proves Heavy Reading – A Review by Yvonne Lorkin
Weighing in at a hefty 2.3kilos, the brand new Wine Atlas of New Zealand by Michael Cooper will not only boost your wine intelligence but also double as a doorstop, something to press flowers in, a body-building aid and a formidable weapon should someone decide to thwack you on the side of the head with it during a domestic argument. Published by Hodder Moa, it has over 250,000 words “which is bigger than James Halliday’s Wine Atlas of Australia” according to Cooper. And at 408 pages and carrying a price tag of $125, it’s no small investment – but it’s one that anyone even remotely interested in the wines of New Zealand should think about making.
Although this is the second edition of the Wine Atlas of New Zealand (the first was published in 2002), it’s practically an entirely new book in looks and content; and it’s easy to see why. Since the first book was produced, the number of wine-producing companies has increased by almost 200 to around 582 in 2008, and New Zealand’s total vineyard area has doubled. It’s amazing to think of the development that’s occurred in only 6 years but stretch that out of what’s happened in recent decades and the picture becomes clearer. Cooper points out in the section titled ‘A Brief History of Wine in New Zealand’ that wine exports have risen from 2.9m litres to 87.8m litres in the last 20 years and our domestic production rate has increased massively from 39.2m litres to around 200m litres in that time.
History aside, if you’d like to get to grips with Overseas Ownership and how we’re faring in the Global Market, the influence of climate, soil and topography, the grape varieties we grow, how wine is made, labelling laws along with detailed information on New Zealand’s principal wine regions – then this is one book you should own; even if only for the maps. In a break from traditional wine maps, Cooper’s show both the topography of each region and its various sub-regions including specific local detail and intensive vineyard areas. For example, if you need to get your head around the differences between Marlborough’s Wairau and Awatere Valley, or Waipara and Canterbury, or what makes North Otago so different from Central – it’s all here.
Not just a book of behemoth proportions, it’s an almanack of our little wine treasure in the antipodes. Much is made of the photography which is ok but not great; I thought for such an important book that more creativity and planning could’ve elevated its visual appeal. Perhaps advice on art direction from the legendary Len Cheeseman (see Church Road, A Love Affair with Wine) wouldn’t go amiss next time.
