WINE

Our wine tastes like no other New Zealand wine. The climate and soils of Matakana are ideally suited to producing the fruit-driven wines that New Zealand has become famous for, but we use Old World techniques to give our reds the structure of the great wines of Pomerol and St Emilion.

Although each bottle of Gillman wine should reflect the vintage it was made in, all our wines share the same characteristics – rich ripe fruit combined with a warm earthiness that comes from the soil our vines are grown in. The finish is long and satisfying, overlaying very soft tannins that will allow the wine to mature and evolve gracefully.

Our aim is to create a wine which is ideal with food – an elegant and approachable red which has attracted the attention and listings at a selection of New Zealand’s finest restaurants.

Every bottle is special. We create a single exceptional wine each year – a blend of cabernet franc, merlot and malbec.

Each vintage is unique and handled slightly differently, but the general techniques we use remain the same each year.

In April, we harvest the grapes by hand. After the grapes are inspected and under-ripe or damaged berries are removed, the bunches are de-stemmed and fermented in small open vats using natural yeasts. We hand-plunge the wine every four hours during fermentation and the wine remains on the skins for up to a total of 21 days before we press using a traditional basket press.

Malolactic fermentation takes place in new French Seguin Moreau oak barrels. While in the barrels, we rack frequently to develop and soften the tannins and clarify the wine in the second winter using fresh egg whites. The wine is then developed in oak for two years before we bottle and label.

Dark garnet in colour. Intense nose of red plums, wet leaves, garrigue, cedar and smoke – alongside a touch of violet. The palate is mellow yet persistent, with red fruits on the front before progressing to a savoury, earthy and mushroom-inflected mid-palate. Pleasantly long on the finish, with fine-grained, powdery tannins. Only 1,471 bottles were produced from the 2019 vintage.

Alcohol: 13.5%
Varietal: Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec
Region: Matakana, New Zealand