The Heathcote wine region, nestled between the Goulburn Valley and Bendigo regions, is famous as a premium Shiraz producing area. Like many parts of central Victoria, it was largely used for sheep grazing, followed by gold mining, before wine production began. The first vines appeared in the 1860s, but it was not until the 1960s that the real wave of development occurred.

Heathcote is recognised as a producer of extraordinary Shiraz wines, even rivalling those of the Rhone Valley from where the grape cuttings were originally sourced, and is home to  winemakers who have achieved international fame for their representations of Australian Shiraz. However, other red wines of quality also have emerged, as well as whites such as Chardonnay and Viognier.

Heathcote wines are perceived as exclusive, not only because of their extremely high quality, but because of the difficulty in obtaining them.
  
Heathcote's climate and soils are strongly influenced by the Mt Camel Range, which runs from Corop in the north to Tooborac in the south, providing natural tunneling for the prevailing cool, south to south-east winds that blow throughout the growing period from October to March. The result is summer temperatures two to three degrees lower than the peaks for nearby Bendigo, and a cooler mean January temperature. Rainfall is surprisingly even during the year and, thanks to the hillside location of most vineyards, spring frost is seldom a problem.

While there is significant soil variation in the region, the slopes of the Mt Camel Range comprise a superb red soil with fine structure overlying uniformly textured red calcareous sodic clay soils. Confusingly for laymen, these soils are known as Cambrian Greenstones and, in their local manifestation, as the Heathcote Greenstone Belt.

Info: Australian Wine & Brandy Corporation www.wineaustralia.com