The Oregon winemaker Maggie Harrison, 52, launched her label, Antica Terra, in 2005, and is now considered one of the Willamette Valley’s leading purveyors of chardonnay and pinot noir. But it wasn’t until last year, after operating out of a nondescript warehouse in Dundee for the better part of two decades, that her business got a home worthy of its stature: a 148-acre patch of land on the outskirts of Amity, a small town about an hour south of Portland. Since taking over the property, Harrison has been at work creating her dream winery with a team of collaborators, chief among them Jai Kumaran, 42, a partner at the architecture and design firm West of West, which has offices in Portland and Los Angeles. Their first project, a candlelit tasting room and kitchen facility fronted by a dramatic oculus, debuted last year. Now comes what they call the Table in the Trees: an outdoor dining and hosting space centered on a sinuous, 200-foot-long, concrete and found-stone table set deep in a hilltop forest.
On a warm evening in late July, Harrison hosted her first party there, gathering artist friends and collaborators for a dinner coinciding with the inaugural exhibition at what she calls Antica Terra’s Art Meadow, an installation of naturalistic stone fountains by the Los Angeles-based ceramist Lily Clark, 31. “People say I dress like a cult leader,” Harrison, who wore an ankle-grazing white caftan, was overheard telling a guest. “But I feel more like the leader of a coven. Cults are all about persuasion, whereas with covens, the point is to make magic.” Offering up a seasonal feast and many bottles of wine under the towering white oak trees, she did just that.
The attendees: Harrison and the Antica Terra team — including the winery’s head chef, Timothy Wastell, 42; chef de cuisine Ramon Kelly-Canarios, 38, and studio manager Rachel Foster, 28 — were joined by Clark and Kumaran as well as Benjamin Critton, 42, and Heidi Korsavong, 42, who run the Los Angeles art gallery Marta and curated Clark’s exhibition; the Portland-based woodworking artist Nicolas Musso, 43; the felted-wool artist Kristina Foley, 43, who lives in the Willamette Valley; and Kara Holekamp, 37, and Story Wiggins, 39, of Terremoto, a landscape architecture and design firm with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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