After working with Manfred Krankl of Sine Qua Non for eight years, Maggie Harrison launched her own wine project, Lillian Wines. Lillian specializes in Rhone Varietals from Central Coast and in 2005, Oregon became her home when some of her friends asked her to visit them in Willamette’s Eola-Amity Hills AVA and check out Antica Terra’s vineyards. Antica Terra is comprised of 11 acres and is located on a rocky hillside in the Eola-Amity Hills of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The first vines were planted here in 1989 in a clearing within the oak savannah. The geology of the site is extremely unusual. In most of the region, vineyards are planted in the relatively deep, geologically young soils left behind by either the Missoula floods or the volcanic events that formed the Cascade Range. In this place, the remains of a far older pre-historic seabed rise to the surface, leaving the vines to struggle, without topsoil, amongst a fractured mixture of sandstone sown with fossilized oyster shells. Botanica is always sappy and sanguine with a taste of wild rose, sour cherries, and blood orange. It is tempting to define it solely by its compelling texture and lush personality but there is a structural element that is equally striking. This balance between extraordinarily concentrated fruit and intense levels of extract is the essence of this wine.” – Maggie Harrison, Antica Terra.