State of Nature Wines
Wines directed by nature, made by us
How it all began.
In 2018 Vas made his first home wine. I had no winemaking experience, but armed with a few demijohns, a hand-cranked de-stemmer and a creaking basket press I dove head in. I quickly fell in love with the process, finding it fun, challenging and exciting. The first year only 200 bottles were made. This wine was all drank by friends and family and the idea of State of Nature was born.
From there, in 2019 State of Nature made it’s first wine to be released to the public. Production grew to make one tone of Pinot Noir and one tone of Chardonnay, some Cabernet Sauvignon also made it’s way over from Mt.Compass to our cellar, but is yet to be released.
We have also sourced grapes from Kuitpo, Oakbank, Mt Compass and McLaren Vale form growers who’s ideologies and farming practices align with ours.
Our Vineyard
State of Nature is based in the Picadilly Valley, where the Sekerin’s tend to a 1.6h vineyard of premium Chardonnay. The vineyard was converted to organic practices in 2017 When the family took over looking after the vineyard from Petaluma. The vineyard is situated at 500m above sea level on a NW slope, and showed great potential to produce high quality fruit.
The vineyard has since been only pruned by hand, and the yields were restricted. Sheep were used for majority of the year to manage grass. Shoots and snails were managed by hands.
We participate in everything that goes on in the vineyard, outsourcing only if we don’t have the equipment to do ourselves, and even then we help. We do our own pruning and maintenance. It’s also where we make our wine.
State of Nature, for me comes from the political writings of John Locke. To summarise his writings, state of nature is a state of total freedom and equality, where everyone is free to do what they want without causing harm to others, governed only by the laws of nature. I think it is a perfect analogy of what we do, free to make wine, even though convention demands that we need a degree or years of experience. We make wine in a way that is true to us and what we like to drink, without compromise. We make wine, grow veggies and grapes, raise our own meat, we like to think we exist in a state of nature.
— Vas Sekerin, winemaker