Wineries

Heathcote II tells the story of an uncompromising partnership and a wine that is handcrafted, intense and elegant. The grapes have been hand picked from dry grown vines and two individuals created the wine using traditional European methods.

The Merindoc philosophy is simple; we employ our understanding of the site, soil, and the seasons to craft wines that express the unique characteristics of our vineyards, this inturn ensures wines with a true regional identity.

Our aim is to make great wine, with the preservation of natureís flavours, complexities and balance in our wines by using minimal intervention in our vineyards and in the cellar ñ to allow the individual vineyardís ìterroirî or sense of place to express itself by ëinterferingí as little as possible.

Our wines are grown, made and bottled entirely on the estate from our own grapes, using organic and biodynamic principles. We produce our own biodynamic composts and have never used synthetic chemicals on either the vines or the soils, since our vineyards were planted in 1975.

Viticultural practices are simple: own rooted vines (ie. not grafted on to American rootstocks to confer Phylloxera resistance), no irrigation whatsoever, minimal tillage, natural inter-row mulching leading to broad bio-diversity, very low yields giving depth and intensity to our wines. Only hand pruning of the vines and hand harvesting of the fruit can allow us the human connection to our living soil.