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Buyer's Guide to NZ Wines 2008 Buyers Guide to NZ Wines 2008, ISBN 9781869711238 and books by Michael Cooper on sale at thebookshelf.co.nz Buyers Guide to NZ Wines is firmly established as the most authoritative and sought–after guide to New Zealand wines is firmly established as the most authoritative and sought–after guide to New Zealand wines. The Buyers Guide to New Zealand Wines is the must have guide that will help you make informed choices about the best value and best quality of new Zealand wines available. This best–selling title, now in its 16th year of publication, is firmly established as the most authoritative and sought–after guide to New Zealand wines. Updated yearly with new tasting notes and vintage ratings, including the most current vintage, this is a must–have publication for the new initiate and the established wine–buff alike. About the AuthorMichael Cooper is New Zealands most acclaimed wine writer with over 10 books, hundreds of magazine articles to his credit. In 1997, the fifth edition of his book The Wines and Vineyards of New Zealand was awarded the Montana Leisure and Lifestyle category award. His prestigious and long–awaited Wine Atlas of New Zealand, published in November 2002 to critical acclaim, won the Montana Medal for Non–fiction in the 2003 New Zealand Book Awards.ExtractIf you are a fan of New Zealand Chardonnay, you can look forward to some great buys over the next year. Sales of the long–fashionable variety are stagnant, reflecting growing interest in such alternatives as Sauvignon Blanc and Pinar Gris, but this year the country harvested a bumper Chardonnay crop.In Hawke"s Bay, production soared by 26 per cent over 2006 and Gisborne"s harvest rose by a whopping 44 per cent. In both of these key North Island regions, Chardonnay is by far the most extensively planted white–wine variety. Look out for some real bargains among New Zealand"s 500–plus Chardonnays. Wine made the headlines late last year, when scandal enveloped the country"s biggest–selling white, Wither Hills Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2006. A different version of the wine was sent to competitions and prominent magazine tastings around the country than was available to the vast majority of the public. My own tastings and those of Bob Campbell, a Master of Wine, revealed that the sample submitted to the judges was of superior quality to the wine generally on sale. Wine drinkers had no way of telling which version of the Wither Hills wine they were buying, because the various versions were marketed under an identical label. Only 2228 cases of the multiple gold medal–winning sample were bottled, out of a total production of 130,000 cases, giving wine lovers a less than I–in–50 chance of buying the award winner. Following a review of the winery"s actions by the executive committee of New Zealand Winegrowers, Wither Hills" founder Brent Marris resigned as chairman of judges of the industry"s own Air New Zealand Wine Awards and surrendered all of the wine"s medals that had not already been stripped. The key issue was that you cannot present one wine to the judges and a different wine to the public – if you accept that practice, you accept chaos. As wine writer John Saker observed in the New Zealand Herald: "Integrity in regard to competition participation was what this was all about." On a lighter note, the diversity of New Zealand wine has never been more stimulating. Don"t get stuck on a steady diet of Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir. Arneis, Verdelho, Gamay Noir, Dolcetto, Montepulciano and Tempranillo are rare but promising new wines, worth tracking down, and Viognier and Syrah, both little known five years ago, are now highly sought after. Many of the best buys, however, can be found among far less fashionable grapes, such as Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon. It"s definitely time to rediscover Hawke"s Bay"s Cabernet Sauvignons, which have performed strongly in recent Winestate and Cuisine tastings. As Nicholas Buck, of Te Mata Estate, has put it: "If winemakers don"t persevere with Cabernet Sauvignon, toil and worry over it, then they are lessening their chances of making great red wine." – Michael Cooper
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 "Buyer's Guide to NZ Wines 2008")