Scotchmans Hill is a family-owned and operated winery on Scotchmans Road in Drysdale, Victoria. It is situated on Mt Bellarine within the Bellarine Peninsula, Southeast of Geelong.

Mt Bellarine was named by the Scottish immigrants who settled the area in the 1840s – hence the name Scotchmans Hill.

Mt Bellarine is an extinct volcano and accordingly, it has thick, fertile soil of black clay with basalt subsoil. It is highly moisture retentive and gives the wines intense and individual characters.

A ‘cool maritime’ climate exists at Scotchmans Hill, a combination of the cool, dry maritime climate with breezes from the waters of Port Phillip Bay and cool winds coming from the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.

The Scotchmans Hill vineyards sit on North facing slopes at a 120m altitude.

When David and Vivienne Browne planted the first vines at Scotchmans Hill in 1982, it became the second vineyard and first winery in the region.

Evolving from the first vintage in 1986 which was sourced solely from the Bellarine Peninsula, Scotchmans Hill now produces some of Australia’s most complex yet elegant wines and distributes wine from Australia and New Zealand’s key winemaking regions.

Scotchmans Hill is rated as a 5 star Winery in the 2011 James Halliday Australian Wine Companion. - Daniel Jess