The Heathcote wine region is located in Victoria, north of Melbourne. It is one of the largest Shiraz producing regions in Victoria.
The GI is 1,913 km2 in size and has a total of 1,836 hectares of vineyards. The main varieties grown in the region are Shiraz, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Grenache.
Heathcote Regional Snapshot 2023-24
Regional Snapshots are one-page profiles updated annually of individual Australian wine regions. They provide at-a-glance summary statistics on: climatic characteristics, viticulture data, winegrape production, and winegrape price and export sales data for wine, compared against the same statistics for the whole of Australia.
Download nowCabernet Sauvignon
Further proving that this is red wine country, the Cabernet Sauvignon style is rich and generous, with blackberry aromatics and flavours. Some of the classic central Victorian eucalypt-mint character is present in some vintages.
- Heathcote's climate and soils are strongly influenced by the Mt Camel Range, providing natural tunnelling for the prevailing cool, south to south-east winds that blow throughout the growing period from October to March.
- The result is a cooler mean January temperature with summer temperatures two to three degrees lower than the peaks for nearby Bendigo.
- 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, these soils are known as Cambrian Greenstones.