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A Thanksgiving to remember By By Elizabeth Baird
Recipes by Mark Picone and adapted by The Canadian Living Test Kitchen

Harvest celebrations at Vineland Estates Winery mean dining in harmony with the region's orchards, gardens and farms.

Photography by Edward Pond

It's barely dawn and an early morning mist cloaks the burnished fall countryside. Vines, golden now and heavy with grapes, march up and down the rolling fields edged with trees in bronzed and rouged fall hues. (Continued below right...)

(Continued from above...)
It's harvest time at Vineland Estates Winery. And while there's a hum of activity around the grape stemming and crushing area, a few steps away in the winery restaurant, called Mark Picone at Vineland Estates Winery Restaurant, the activity is equally inspired by the fall harvest in the fertile and climate-blessed Niagara Peninsula. In the kitchen, with a splendid view over vineyards to the Bruce Trail and beyond to Lake Ontario, executive chef Mark Picone cooks in harmony with Vineland wines and with the orchards, gardens and farms in the region. Markfs cuisine, with a touch of gusto to pay homage to his Italian heritage and work experience in Italy and France, is a passionate commitment to the subtleties of taste and to his local suppliers.

"Our operation is very artisanal," says Mark as he picks up a flat of baby greens delivered to the kitchen door. "Bread, for example: we have at least five different sourdough starters. We really have to plan ahead to have enough of each kind of bread for service." As you might imagine, there is more than bread to consider.

The Picone kitchen brigade fashions Niagara's pumpkins into soup; plums and pluots grown a few kilometres away into velvety smooth sorbets; naturally raised meats from Cumbrae Farms in nearby Jarvis into main dishes; and prosciutto and sausages cured by artisan Mario Pingue, and almonds, pecans, walnuts, chestnuts and native persimmons grown by Ernie Grimo into dishes that have made the winery a gourmet dining destination.

At Thanksgiving, a Vineland menu is an abundant testament to the harvest. And celebrate the harvest is what Mark does with the following menu, created to inspire thanks and appreciation for everything that we are so blessed to enjoy here in Canada.