“Nature herself is the author of wine. Nothing added nothing lost”

Award Winners.

We’re honoured to have received a Gold Medal from Wine Showcase Magazine for our 2017 GilGraves Rosé, receiving 93 points overall.

This wine is a pale golden peach colour with abundant aromatics, including apricot and rose petal. It features apricot, dried apple, strawberry and slight rosemary spice.

This low intervention wine has minimal sulphur and is a refreshingly savoury dry wine.

What people are saying about GilGraves Wines

The GilGraves family vineyard is a pint-sized affair in Axedale, located somewhere between Heathcote and Bendigo. They’ve been releasing small batch wines eked out off their own plot, and here bolstered with fruit from Chalmers in Heathcote. The wines are produced by the crew at Boomtown. It’s all great fun, kinda cool, and the resulting wine is great! And value! They’re down that natural wine pathway somewhere in winemaking/growing, as a reference. Not much not to like here.
- Mike Bennie, Wine Front (winefront.com.au)

2020 Viognier

Viognier from lovely humans done righteously. The humble GilGraves label is often on my radar. Smells like cashew and ripe citrus, whiffs of sea spray and fino sherry in there too. Slurpy texture but hassled by that minerally saltiness, rolls long, finishes fresh, zingy even. Real thirst quenching kind of style here, though you'd also say quietly complex too. This is an excellent expression.
- Mike Bennie, wine critic and published author

2019 SMS GilGraves Field Blend

Shiraz, malbec, sangiovese. I like this GilGraves outfit very much. Pure and delicious wines. Squeaky textured and bright and vibrant, very fresh, pure feeling, cherry juice and cranberry, good dusting of sweet spice, faint fennel and mint notes. So lovely. Pretty medium weight, the silkiest of tannins. Such a great drink here.
- Mike Bennie, wine critic and published author

Our vineyard is located near Axedale, half way between Bendigo and Heathcote in central Victoria.

In 2011 we started developing the vineyard, planting four varieties of vines, Shiraz, Malbec, Sangiovese and Viognier. We now have 2550 vines. We consider nature herself to be the author of wine, hence we employed minimal intervention principles from the beginning with the dorper sheep being responsible for weed control.

Just as in food we believe in the principle of nothing added nothing lost. We are uniting the wine growing and wine making low intervention principles to produce authentic soulful wines.

In March 2017, 2018, 2019 2020 and 2021 we picked our own GilGraves Estate grapes, Shiraz, Sangiovese and Malbec and a small amount of Viognier.

In 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 we decided to make a Field Blend of Shiraz/Malbec/ Sangiovese. The 2021 GilGraves Field Blend (SMS) is very popular and is still available. This is a generous and plush wine with well developed structure, met with an abundance of fruit. It has a deep red hue with a well rounded style with rich spice plum characteristics. This is a full vineyard, true field blend style, with one pick of the entire vineyard fermented together. In 2019 we yielded 3 tonne at an average baume of approximately 12.9. In 2021 we picked another 3 tonne.

Fruit was destemmed and fermented in an open top fermenter, utilising available native yeasts only. Pressed after 18 days, settled and moved to seasoned oak barrels for maturating. Malolactic ferment in spring, racked and sulphured with minimal sulphur in February and bottled in February.

For a field blend, this is exquisitely balanced regarding ripeness…nothing too over nor under ripe in the mix. A challenge to get right, but 21 was a great year for us with a good yield.

Tim form Boomtown said “Validation of the hard work in the vines to this point, and the promise of a bright future for harvests still to come”

The GilGraves Cabernet Sauvignon Rose vintages have been very popular and selling out. The 2023 vintage being released later in 2023. The Cabernet Sauvignon is grown on sedimentary soils south of the Heathcote G.I.

The GilGraves 2022 Sangiovese, again made by Tim from Boomtown is drinking very well. The grapes are from the Chalmers family on the Cambrian soils in Heathcote. Two tonne of fruit was handpicked in 2022 from Chalmers vineyard, Colbinabbin. This fruit was destemmed without crushing and transferred into an open pot fermenter. Wild yeast ferment, with no additions during ferment. Fermentation took 3 weeks in total. The fruit was then pressed and settled of gross lees in tanks and transferred to seasoned french oak when dry. Malolactic fermentation finished in October and the wine was racked in December, with a small sulphur addition and bottled in February of 2023.

A youthful expression of Sangiovese, with a bright red hue and palate of raspberry and subtle spice draped along a structure of firm, fine tannin. Not too ripe, not too extracted. A sweet/savoury balance that is too easy to enjoy. lGilGraves added Viognier to the portfolio in 2019, which sold out quickly. The 2022 Viognier is a fresh crunchy wine with honeysuckle fruit flavour. The 2023 vintage will be avilable later this year

An exciting addition ( 2020) to the GilGraves wine varietals is what we’ve called Easy Red . We purchased 2 tone of Shiraz from a vineyard in Metcalfe central Victoria and made a Carbonic Shiraz Beaujolais style wine. The grapes were destemeed and fermented as whole berries in a tank with CO2 and sealed. This is a process called carbonic maceration. We have called this wine Easy Red because all reports indicate its “so easy to drink” chilled or room temperature any season. We recommend drinking this wine chilled, however in the warmer months its an alternative light red. The subtle palate displays berry and cherryish fruit characteristics and is simply delicious!

We are about to release our first estate Malbec. One tonne was picked March 2022. The fruit was handpicked, intiailly processed as a whole bunch carbonic maceration to preserve vibrancy of fruit. After an 8 day carbonic maceration, the fruit was destemeed and fermented with the remaining sugars on full skins in open pots to build structure and presence. Pressing after a further 10 days, the wine rested over winter in seasoned oak barrels, racked in early summer, post malolactic fermentation and bottled with minimal sulphur addition.