Introduce a new test type allowing the usage of full GORM in a fast way

It would be able to write some unit tests that can actually reach the database.

Currently those tests need to be written as integration tests, but that means loading the entire application which is too slow.

Is it possible to introduce a new test type that would allow us to write unit tests that could test methods calling updateQuery, for example, as well as every other GORM method, by injecting a real Hibernate session, but without loading everything else (Spring resources, Bootstrap, etc) so that it could be run almost as fast as unit tests and still enable us to better test domain classes?