Seeking Beauty at Antica Terra Since 2005, winemaker Maggie Harrison has nurtured 11 acres of land in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, turning it into a vineyard that today makes some of America’s most rarefied and desirable wines. Harrison’s route here was meandering and unconventional. As a graduate, instinct stopped Harrison from accepting a prestigious job in Atlanta, Georgia, and while she thought about what to do next, she worked in restaurants back in Chicago – a period in which she tasted wine voraciously. Through the literal grapevine, Harrison heard that an irreverent Austrian winemaker in California, Manfred Krankl, was looking for an assistant at his winery Sine Qua Non. With no training or preconceived ideas about wine beyond trust in her own good taste, she got the job. “The most comforting thing about making wine is that I don’t have to know anything,” says Harrison, “I just have to be willing to be authentic and rigorous in the work.” That she was, viticulturally-speaking, a blank canvas was (and remains) a strength, she says, before proudly stating that she didn’t visit another vineyard until age 45. “In art,” she tells me, “you don’t need the theory to make something beautiful.” Read more about Maggie’s work at Antica Terra on the #TOASTmagazine via the link in bio. Antica Terra (@antica_terra) Words by Mina Holland (@minaholland) Photography by Kelli Radwanski (@kelli.radwanski).