HEATHCOTE BOUND

MICHAEL HARDEN hits the road to explore regional Victoria's Heathcote, home to this year's Best Destination Dining and a host of other delights.

- MICHAEL HARDEN

In a region populated by well-visited destinations like Daylesford, Bendigo, Kyneton and Castlemaine, the central Victorian town of Heathcote has remained something of an unknown quantity. Sure, it’s at the centre of the eponymous wine region renowned for the quality of its shiraz in particular, but Heathcote has not exerted the same pull for food-curious travellers as some of its better-known neighbours. For many, it’s always been more a place to drive through than to. But now, after the arrival of the excellent Chauncy, which opened just off Heathcote’s main drag in 2021, the town is making some noise on the food and wine tourist radar.

Chauncy took out this year’s Best Destination Dining award at Gourmet Traveller’s Annual Restaurant Awards, ahead of a pack of remarkable regional restaurants from across the country. Opened in a handsome Gold Rush-era sandstone building by French-born chef Louis Naepels and his Australian sommelier partner Tess Murray, Chauncy is a beautifully conceived triumph that takes its cues from both provincial French restaurants and the variety and quality of the local produce and wine.

Spending a few languid hours in the restaurant’s light-drenched dining room is well worth the 120-kilometre drive from Melbourne on its own, but it also provides the perfect excuse to have a bit of a poke around this region that was recognised by UNESCO as a Creative Region of Gastronomy in 2019. Also, Tess Murray is a brilliant sommelier who has assembled an excellent cellar at Chauncy (much of it highlighting great local makers) and it would be a crime not to take proper advantage of that. Accommodation is definitely worth considering.