Box Grove Vineyard, Nagambie Lakes
Box Grove Vineyard is a 27-hectare property in the parish of Tabilk in the Nagambie Lakes sub-region of the Goulburn Valley, planted in 1996 and owned and operated by Sarah Gough, with Callan Randall as vineyard manager. Where the vineyard began as a conventional commercial operation growing shiraz and cabernet sauvignon under contract for a large wine company, it has since been comprehensively transformed – through a decade and a half of progressive grafting – into one of the most varied and unusual vineyards in Victoria, now home to fifteen varieties drawn from Italy, southern France and Portugal. Accredited as Sustainable Winegrowers by the AWRI, Box Grove produces its own wines as well as supplying fruit to a tight cohort of innovative smaller producers including Fin, Ephemera, Mac Forbes, Vino Intrepido, Tar and Roses, Pfeiffer and others. The site is defined by soils of deep red clay and banks of granite sand over ancient decomposed creek beds, with Lake Nagambie moderating the extremes of a warm, dry growing season.