The Heathcote Dilemma – Is it a region or sub-region?

While the issue of Coonawarra’s boundaries may never go away, there’s a smaller version of it happening right now, around the once-sleepy central Victorian town of Heathcote. What’s at stake is the use of the name of Heathcote itself. One group of locals, the Heathcote District Winegrowers Association HDVA, which numbers 52 growers, is lobbying for the Heathcote name to become the name of a large area just under ninety kilometres in length from north to south and over thirty-five kilometres at its widest point from west to east. This region is larger than that which has historically been identified with the name of Heathcote, and encompasses five vineyards as far south and west of Heathcote as Redesdale and Mia Mia, and as far east as Graytown.

The opposing lobby, the Heathcote Vignerons Association HVA, is the voice of the small number of owners of older Heathcote vineyards who are fighting what they consider to be an uphill battle against the heavily financed interests which own the new developments to the north and south of Heathcote itself. They hold the view that the name of Heathcote should remain as a small and finite sub-regional name that would be a discrete part of a larger region that includes the extended plantings. It is their wish that a new name be found for the wider region.

What makes this issue so important is the presently rudderless way that the Australian wine industry is dealing with regions whose names and borders are subject to dispute. I was secretary of the Coonawarra Vignerons Association for a period in 1983, when the issue of the region’s borders was always the hottest item on the agenda. Little has changed there in eighteen years. Today we face the ludicrous situation in which the Geographical Indications Committee GIC, which was established by the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation AWBC to resolve matters of this nature, has had its determinations objected to to such a degree that it has been legally removed from the entire process, which has fallen on the untried and inexpert lap of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal AAT. There’s little doubt in anybody’s mind that it will end up in the Federal Court.

This is no way for decisions of such magnitude and credibility for an industry to be made. The wine industry must work with government to establish a cleaner system for it to clean up its own backyard. As we’ve seen with Coonawarra, it’s not an issue that can be swept under the carpet, for the longer it takes to resolve, the bigger the problem becomes. Especially when vineyards are planted at the rate they have been over the last five years.

There is presently a feeling amongst the HDVA that since they have made an application for regional status with the GIC and they have met its requirements to the best of their abilities, that they are within arm’s reach of achieving the decision they are after. This attitude patently ignores the example of Coonawarra, with which the Heathcote debate has several clear similarities.

What’s in a name?

The shirazes of Mount Ida, Hanging Rock, Jasper Hill and in recent years the Heathcote Winery have created a strong demand in Australia and some overseas markets for the niche product that presently is Heathcote shiraz. With new vineyards numbering several hundred hectares planted well to the north of the town itself and with hundreds of hectares shortly to be planted, and if the HDVA’s present proposal becomes reality, there’s going to be a great deal more Heathcote shiraz than there is at present. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but most of it would be substantially different to the Heathcote shiraz whose reputation would be used to sell it.

I recently tasted a series of wines sourced from vineyards located from the north to the south of the HDVA’s proposed region, each made in pretty well identical fashion at Hanging Rock’s winery by John Ellis. As I expected, the wines revealed that the further north you travel from Heathcote town towards Colbinabbin and then Rochester, just north of the northern extremity of the suggested region, they become thicker in texture, more chunky, fleshy and densely structured than those made around the town itself, whose intense dark fruit flavours, tightness and fine, firm tannins are part of their deserved success.

There’s no doubt in my mind that with slight misgivings, each of these wines does however deserve to come from the same region, but nobody’s really disputing that. In a perfect world I’d find it hard to include Redesdale, Graytown and even Tooboorac in the region, whatever it is finally called. This is despite the fact that the Eppalock Ridge winery, which is located near Redesdale in the south-west of the HDVA’s proposed region, has been labelled its wine as ‘Heathcote’ since 1982. Despite also that wineries like Osicka’s at Graytown joined the Bendigo region as soon as they could after its inception around 1980 since Heathcote was then considered to be a sub-region of Bendigo.

Before the inception of the Bendigo region, Graytown’s vineyards were formerly regarded as part of the Goulburn Valley region and are located considerably closer to Nagambie than they are to Heathcote. They are in an entirely different valley and their wines are substantially different in texture, style and taste to those of Heathcote.

Tooboorac is significantly later, cooler and its wine is substantially different from that of Heathcote. The largest vineyard at Tooboorac is Merindoc, owned by the mother of Stephen Shelmerdine, Chairman of the Victorian Wineries Tourism Council and Treasurer of the Victorian Wine Industry Association and a former Chairman of the Winemakers Federation of Australia. Shelmerdine’s mother is also named as the owner of another large vineyard near Colbinnabin, near the northern extreme of the proposed region.

Stephen Shelmerdine is also the Winemakers Federation of Australia’s appointed member of the three-man Geographical Indications Committee, but has an alternate in Tony Smith from Plantagenet when faced by a potential regional conflict of interest such as that presented here. I am also assured by Rob Falla, President of the HDVA and manager of both Shelmerdine-owned vineyards near Heathcote, that in all respects, especially those related to this debate, that he receives his instructions from Mrs Shelmerdine.

Fixing the border

Rob Falla puts the case that the GIC specifically considers a range of parameters other than strictly viticultural and geographical aspects in its decision-making processes when determining what, exactly might constitute a region or Geographic Indication GI. These include historical and cultural factors like what people consider to be their major town, where they meet, eat, play football, etc. As far as I am concerned, I hope the GIC doesn’t put too much emphasis on these matters, since nobody is suggesting that a wine regional delineation should become a socially impenetrable iron curtain which divides drinking partners or football teams from each other. Similarly, whatever its outcome is, at least Coonawarra is no longer defined by century-old local government boundaries.

So, given my misgivings about three of the locations within the proposed area, I agree that it should constitute a single region. The special Greenstone Belt and their ‘Cambrian’ soils that Ron Laughton specified in the early 1980s have since been found to extend well beyond the area to the immediate north of the Heathcote township, in actual fact from south of Rochester down to Tooboorac. Sure, it gets substantially warmer the further north you go, but there is enough of a regional stamp amongst the wines to justify a single region from the point of view of wine credibility. Laughton, who is also involved in new vineyards developments on both sides of the HVA’s subregion, says: ‘Any region would kill to have a backbone of one special soil type, but I’m not stupid enough to suggest that the region should be restricted to this.’

There’s also some measure of agreement between the parties that there should be several sub-regions within the overall region. The HDVA suggests that ‘Heathcote Range’ also known as the Mt Camel Range, McIvor Valley, Graytown and ‘Eppalock Plains’ be given sub-regional status, while the HVA is specifically only concerned with the region around Heathcote itself and to the immediate north. But the HDVA seriously questions whether there is sufficient homogeniety of soil type within the HVA’s proposed sub-region for it to be given that status, saying that of all its entire proposed region, it is the most geologically diverse component.

It’s understandable why many of the growers to the north of the sub-regional line wish to retain the use of the word ‘Heathcote’ on their wine labels. Take the case of Ian Rathjen at Colbinnabin West, not far south from the northern end of the HDVA’s northern regional border. His great-grandfather planted eight acres of vines on the original family property there in the early 1860s, although those vines were uprooted about sixty years ago. Rathjen first planted his own vines in 1995 and is steadily increasing his present vineyard of 65 acres. ‘We’ve been here since the 1860s and always considered ourselves to be Heathcote’, he says.

Well-known Victorian winemaker John Ellis says he and Tyrrell’s were given approval at a meeting attended by representatives of the GIC in the mid 1990s to use the term ‘Heathcote’ for the wines from a new shiraz plantings that are not included in the HVA’s sub-regional borders. Both Hanging Rock and Tyrrell’s have done so with wines from 1997 and 1998 and are looking to increase the production of each.

It remains to be seen whether or not it can be implemented, but I believe there is a compromise solution that will simultaneously resolve a number of issues. This suggestion, which has been warmly received by individuals on both sides of the debate, is to accept the boundary for the HDVA’s proposed region and to call it instead ‘Greater Heathcote’. This region would include from the outset three sub-regions, namely Mt Camel, Graytown and Heathcote Town or Heathcote Central or Heathcote Village, whose boundaries would be based on the HVA’s proposed sub-region. In time, as plantings increased, sub-regions could emerge around Redesdale and Tooboorac.

The HVA would cede to the rest of the region the right to use ‘Heathcote’ in their regional name and the HVDA would cede to the HVA the right to have their own sub-region incorporating the same word.

This would give all parties access to the Heathcote name, give clear recognition to the region’s historical epicentre around the developments of the 1970s and early 1980s, clearly identify that Graytown is substantially different from the bulk of the region, highlight the outcrops of the important Greenstone and ‘Cambrian’ soil found in the Heathcote Town and Mt Camel sub-regions and recognise the various cultural and historic links within the region. As such, it would carry credibility in a wine sense and avoid massive costs, delays, appeals and court cases which would inevitably occur if things proceed the way they are.

I believe this to be the best and most realistic outcome for this region and retain the opinion that the GIC would not be doing itself or anyone else any favours in the long term by determining that the entire area in question be called ‘Heathcote’. Then it would be up to the AAT to arrive at the right decision. And then the Federal Court. And then! Please login to post comment