Weekend wine guide: The European labels worth discovering
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A taste of Europe. Photo / Getty Images
Michael Cooper has 45 wine books and several literary awards to his credit. In the 2004 New Year Honours, Michael was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
One of this country's leading wine importers, Vintners New Zealand, traces its roots to the early 1980s. A group of Auckland businessmen, frustrated by the lack of good-quality overseas wines in a heavily protected market, formed a consortium to source their own wine.
To defray some of the import costs, they launched a company to sell the wines in the local market. Known initially as Kitchener Wines, and later as Concerto Merchants, it is now called Vintners and distributes wines from New Zealand and overseas. The European labels below are worth discovering.
Famille Perrin Côtes du Rhône Reserve 2023
★★★★½
Instantly appealing, this French dry white is blended from varieties rare in New Zealand – grenache blanc, marsanne, roussanne and viognier. Mouthfilling and dry, it has well-ripened stonefruit flavours, fresh and deep, and a slightly oily richness. (13.5% alc/vol) $32
Nivarius Rioja Tempranillo Blanco 2023
★★★★
Full of youthful vigour, this characterful Spanish wine is from a white mutation of the Rioja region's red grape, tempranillo. Grown at 700m above sea level and handled in tanks and oak barrels, it is full-bodied, with a touch of tannin and strong, peachy, gently spicy flavours, dry and lingering. (13.5% alc/vol) $28
La Vieille Ferme Rosé 2024
★★★½
A huge seller internationally, this pale pink French rosé is lively and medium-bodied, with peach, strawberry and spice flavours, offering very easy drinking. (12.5% alc/vol) $20
Méditéo 2024
★★★★
From southeastern France, this bright, light pink rosé is delicious in its youth. Buoyantly fruity, it has very satisfying depth of flavour, dry and sustained. (12% alc/vol) $22
Terras Lusas Adega de Redondo 2021
★★★½
Bargain-priced, this is a good, honest Portuguese red. Fragrant, with raisiny aromas, it's slightly gutsy, with a berryish, spicy flavour, earthy notes and a good tannin backbone. It's drinking well now. (13.5% alc/vol) $17
La Vielle Ferme Rouge 2023
★★★★
If you enjoy pinot noir, try this characterful French blend of carignan, cinsault, grenache and syrah. Deeply coloured, it is full-bodied and vibrantly fruity, with generous flavours of red berries and spices, ripe and well-rounded. (13.5% alc/vol) $25
Château Pradeaux 2023
★★★★
Already drinking well, this is a very moreish red Bordeaux. Merlot-based, with dark, purple-flushed colour, it is mouthfilling, with lush, vibrant blackcurrant, plum and spice flavours, a hint of chocolate, and gentle tannins. Very harmonious. (13% alc/vol) $30
Wine of the week
Tocado Garnacha 2022
★★★½
This Spanish red offers top value. Bright ruby, it is mouthfilling and smooth, with generous, ripe plum, berry, spice and liquorice flavours. A good, all-purpose red. (13.5% alc/vol) $14-$15
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Switzerland, with its central European location, had been a great place to be based and it was also very pro-business. It was well organised, very safe and offered high quality education, healthcare and transport. "It's been very good for us but nothing beats the community of rural South Otago," Mr Cochrane said. They missed that sense of community and there was the appeal of a rural community to return to. Working overseas, both in banking and commerce, he discovered it was very much transaction first while, in New Zealand's rural communities, it was relationships and people first. Returning home had been a stark reminder of that, he said. Stepping back from Oritain had been in the back of his mind and, once the Series C capital raise was completed in mid-2023, it became more front of mind. Oritain raised $US57 million to develop technology and expand into new markets and industries. "The time seemed right, I'd done it for 12 years ... it was a big commitment," he said. Asked what he was most proud of at Oritain, Mr Cochrane quipped: "survival". With the failure rate of start-ups estimated at 92%, survival was good. But probably the biggest highlights were getting the company to a successful Series C capital raise and the team that had been built at Oritain. There was a very strong culture — "a real Kiwi culture with a can-do attitude" — and that had been taken off-shore. The company had been ambitious and it had attracted "fantastic" people. Commercialising science was challenging, but probably a bigger challenge was managing and maintaining culture while taking a business offshore. To build something special and attract people like Sir John Key to be part of it was very gratifying. Sir John initially said no — as he had previously to many other companies and organisations that had approached him when he left politics in late 2016 — but Mr Cochrane proved persuasive and Sir John really liked the story He had been exposed to the company while doing advisory work for kiwifruit marketer Zespri, which used Oritain's technology to trace kiwifruit being illegally grown in China. Last year, Oritain expanded its international reach, opening an office in Singapore to join those in London, Washington DC, Singapore, Auckland and Dunedin, which were home, in total, to more than 200 staff. Mr Cochrane made that announcement while in Singapore with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's delegation, which was representing New Zealand businesses' interests in priority South East Asian markets. Quipping that the next day he was in the Owaka pub, Mr Cochrane said he had been fortunate to have been able to have operated in two different worlds. But home was the farm. Having bought neighbouring land, the Cochranes were back farming a total land area of 2498ha, with the help of staff — "it's Totara Hills version 2.0," he said. The intention was to run the farming operation as one. They wanted to farm "simply and well and profitably" but also do things a little differently, thinking of ways to benefit the land and also use out-of-the-box thinking. They wanted to farm sustainably — both financially but also very much long-term environmentally — and were looking at things like regenerative agriculture. Mr Cochrane believed that was an opportunity for New Zealand; many farmers were already employing lot of the principles already like multi-species, rotational grazing and reducing chemical use. They wanted to eat the produce off their farm and it needed to be produced in a way they were comfortable with, he said. It was also an inter-generational farm — Mr Cochrane's father had worked on it and now daughter Sophie and son Andrew were getting involved — and the family wanted to be part of the farming community and wider Catlins community. Sophie Cochrane said they hoped that as well as having the farm as their home, it would also be a springboard for ideas and for other people in the community "to do cool things". She and her brother, who is in his second year of university in Canada, were keen on developing eco or agri-tourism on the property, and wanted to do that in partnership with the community. They were keen for a walking track on not only their property but also hopefully involving the surrounding area. Miss Cochrane, who has been away from New Zealand for nine years, spent her last secondary school year overseas, studying by correspondence. Both his children had benefited from growing up in New Zealand but also from seeing the rest of the world, Mr Cochrane believed. Knowing there was a home to return to also kept them feeling grounded in the land and the experience also made them appreciate what they had in New Zealand, Miss Cochrane said. She completed an arts degree in politics, sociology and East European studies at UCL (University College London) and a master's degree in environmental anthropology — how people related to the land and vice-versa — and did her thesis on the Otago region. While in London, she did an internship at the House of Lords. While she had not particularly used either degree in her job, they were "wonderful to do". Now working in film and television in the UK, she was fulfilling a dream she had since she was little. For both father and daughter, a simple life in South Otago was appealing, and Mr Cochrane saw a "real movement" towards that simplicity and cleaner living . "I think we have that in New Zealand and take it for granted," he said. People were also looking for real relationships and authenticity, something the country had in "bucketloads too". The Cochranes saw lots of opportunities on Tōtara Hills to diversify. Those they had taken on farm tours were "blown away" by New Zealand farming systems. Farmers did not tell their story well enough and agri or eco-tourism was a good conduit to hero those farming systems. Mr Cochrane felt very optimistic for the New Zealand agricultural sector, saying land use would change but what that land produced would be increasingly sought after. Farming was at an exciting stage and there were lots of opportunities. "Love it or hate it", the Emissions Trading Scheme also provided revenue opportunities for farmers, he said. At Oritain, the company had been very close to brands and understood what customers wanted. Getting closer to consumers probably impacted the way his family farmed; producers needed to be vigilant and aligned to what consumers wanted, he said. Asked whether the family would market their produce themselves, Mr Cochrane believed there were bigger gains for the industry by people working together. He used to sell venison at the Otago Farmers' Market and he loved the connection with consumers, understanding why they bought a particular cut and what they were going to do with it. It was a great way of connecting consumers to the land. Contrary to what people might think, start-up life was not glamorous. Mr Cochrane estimated he spent 150 to 200 days a year travelling — "if I never got on another plane, I'd be happy" — over the past decade. There was pressure to "get stuff done" and flights were often done at night to avoid hotel bills. He was extremely proud of what Oritain had achieved and he looked forward to watching what its "amazing" team continued to achieve, under his successor, new chief executive Alyn Franklin. Oritain was a company which was well ahead of its time. It now had a "fantastic springboard" to continue growing and he believed its service would only become more relevant in a heightened geo-political world. In many ways, the likes of Oritain was part of the future of New Zealand — having companies that exported a service to add value to global companies from New Zealand IP, he said. Mr Cochrane cited the examples of Rocket Lab, Halter and Animation Research, saying there were many brilliant businesses in New Zealand. Halter, the virtual fencing and animal management company founded by Craig Piggott, was a great example of leveraging New Zealand's agricultural expertise to create a product. Agri-tech in New Zealand had been in a sweet spot since Gallagher pioneered electrical fencing and, in a way, Oritain was part of that agritech sector. But now Mr Cochrane would be following Oritain's progress from the sideline as he pulled on his boots "Right now, I just want to get a dog coming back to me and learn how to ride a horse again. "My aspirations at the moment are very much to spend time with family and the farm."
