Perched high in the hills above Havelock North, Hill Country Estate was created to be something very different from a standard subdivision – a conservation‑minded rural community where homes sit lightly within a protected landscape of vines, olives and native plantings. Today, the estate offers residents sweeping Hawke’s Bay views, shared recreational amenities and direct access to the land that makes this part of New Zealand famous.

Hill Country Estate was developed in the early 2000s as a “farm park” style project, converting traditional hill‑country farmland into a carefully planned lifestyle estate with strict limits on density. Instead of carving the hills into hundreds of small lots, the design concentrates around 45–47 individual house sites within a wider 100‑hectare estate, keeping most of the land in shared open space, productive planting and conservation.

The core idea was to protect the character of the Te Mata / Havelock North hills while still allowing people to live among them. Landscape protection is built into the legal framework of the estate through covenants that limit development, guide building forms, and retain open ridgelines and valleys. As a result, Hill Country Estate feels more like a large country property shared by a small community than a conventional subdivision on the edge of town.

The estate is described in a 2003 Hawke’s Bay newspaper article as “the dream of Hawke’s Bay developer Andy Lowe”, capturing his long‑held vision for a low‑density hill‑country community above Havelock North. The development was undertaken by Hill Country Pastoral Ltd, the company recorded as the developer of the Hill Country Conservation Estate on Black Barn Road.

Setting the scene for Hill Country Estate Wines

Within this wider landscape sits the Hill Country Estate vineyard, planted on limestone terraces just a few minutes’ drive from the village. The estate’s limited‑edition wines – Chardonnay, Viognier, Blanc de Noir and Syrah – are made exclusively from this hill‑country fruit and reflect the same focus on site, restraint and long‑term stewardship that shaped the estate itself. Together, the residential hill‑country estate and the vineyard tell a single story: a carefully planned community built to protect and celebrate one of Hawke’s Bay’s most distinctive landscapes.