How to Team Your Wine with Your Turkey

By The Inside Source
November 18, 2011

Maggie Harrison

Dining al fresco at Antica Terra

Maggie Harrison As the holiday season approaches, so does party season. Exciting times are ahead, but it's important to be prepared: Do you have enough cocktail dresses to do the rounds? Have you finally learned how to properly cook a turkey? And perhaps most importantly, do you have your food and wine pairings figured out?

left: Maggie Harrison

If your answer to that final question is not a deafening yes, don’t fret. Our cup is full of wine wisdom for you. Just days ago we spoke to wine writer Alice Feiring, who told us about the glasses she swears by and which wines are worth collecting.

Today we do vino talk with winemaker Maggie Harrison, the winemaker co-owner of Oregon’s Antica Terra winery, which just launched its first vintage of wine made entirely from fruit grown on site.

Maggie Harrison’s relationship with wine started when she took on restaurant jobs out of college to fund her insatiable passion for travel. In between long-term trips to Europe or Africa, Harrison worked in some of Chicago’s most recognizable dining establishments, including Tony Mantuano’s Tuttaposto and Rick Bayliss’s Topolobampo—two eateries with diverse and deep wine programs that Harrison learned about during staff wine tastings. With her growing interest, she then took official courses at the Chicago Wine School. When she finally decided to pursue a career in winemaking, she found legendary winemaker Manfred Krankl’s phone number and vigilantly called him until he agreed to hire her in 1998.

Cut to 2005. Harrison was happily producing wine in Southern California at Krankl's iconic Sine Qua Non winery and making her very own syrah, Lillian, when she got a call from Scott Adelson, John Mavredakis and Michael Kramer, friends of Krankl and the new owners Antica Terra, a vineyard in Oregon's Willamette Valley that needed a bit of TLC and a winemaker to make the most of its land. They wanted her to join their team.

While she was hesitant at first ("when you're living in Santa Barbara, a stone's throw from the sea, it's hard to imagine why you would leave," she said) she decided to head to Oregon and check out their land, if only to give them a few pointers. Yet within seconds of standing on a yurt platform atop the forest overlooking a sea of yellow leaves, black plastic, a "failed attempt at weed control" and a defoliating cycle that made up a vineyard in disarray, she was hooked.

“Looking at the vineyard from a distance, I felt like it was a situation I could wrap my hands around,” Harrison said of the instance that changed her life. “I knew that I could do the work, concrete and real, to heal the place and make the wines this land was capable of.”

Maggie Harrison

Harrison in the Antica Terra vineyard and in a wine blending session

Maggie Harrison

Antica Terra

Maggie Harrison Since her move to the Pacific Northwest almost seven years ago, Harrison and her team have been hard at work on cultivating Antica Terra and its wines, a process that culminated in the November release of their first estate-grown 2009 pinot noir. It's an intensely flavorful wine (with hints of huckleberry, blackberry, rose petal and even tobacco) that’s uncharacteristically mineral-y for a North American varietal.

Maggie Harrison

Antica Terra Pinot Noir; Antica Terra Estate Grown

With the holidays barreling down upon us, Harrison gives us some pointers on her favorite grapes and the perfect festive meals to pair them with.

For meat: “Blaufrankisch, also known as Kadarka, is the greatest red grape of Eastern Europe. After floundering in the obscurity of communist Europe, it’s finally finding it’s footing. The grape is a chameleon. It is often described as tasting like a blend of Syrah and Nebbiolo, but can even take on flavors that resemble grapes as different as Pinot Noir and Cabernet. It’s this flexibility that makes it the perfect holiday wine. It can work brilliantly with a wide array of dishes, from exotic game birds like grouse to traditional roast beef, and please every sort of palette along the way. While any Blaufrankisch might do, the absolute best wine is made by Roland Velichs of Moric in Burgenland.”

For fish: “For a holiday meal involving fish I like to turn to the parts of the world where great wine is grown in close proximity to the water; and for me no region showcases as great an affinity between vine and sea as Liguria [in Northwest Italy]. The best of the indigenous local white grapes is called Pigato. It’s the genetic predecessor of Vermentino, and like that grape, it excels in food pairing for its ability to meld Mediterranean, salty, sun-drenched ripeness with acidity. It's almost as scintillating as Riesling. I especially love the tense, honey- and herb- scented wines made by Laura Aschero on steeply trellised hillsides outside of Pontedassio.”

For vegetables: “The white wines of Alsace are the traditional accompaniments to winter vegetable dishes like purees of parsnip and celery root, roasted heirloom squashes, etc. Alsace wines are wonderful, but the frequent presence of residual sugar and extremely intense aromatics mean that they are not for everyone. The white wines grown in the mountainous wine regions of Northern Italy, Valle d’Aosta and Alto-Adige offer wine with the same affinity for vegetables of the season, but in a slightly drier, fresher format. The top local white grape in Valle d’Aosta is Petite Arvine and the version from LesCretes is a perfect alternative to traditional Alsatian varietals like Pinot Gris."