MAGGIE BEER 

 

Maggie, originally from Sydney, worked and travelled overseas in an amazing variety of jobs from a Lift Driver in a New Zealand department store to the Assistant to the Senior Geophysicist for British Petroleum in Libya. Returning home in 1968 and well before becoming immersed in the world of food, she was employed in fields as diverse as light aircraft, Citizenship Law for the American Embassy and House Management at the Women's College of Sydney University.
 
Her marriage to Colin in 1970 led them to the Barossa Valley where they began pheasant breeding and grape growing. The establishment of the Pheasant Farm was the start of a career that now spans farming, food production, exporting, food writing and television presenting.  For years Maggie sat on food related boards such as SARDI (South Australia Research and Development Institute) and Premiers Food Council.

There have been lots of awards over the years from those first heady days when in 1991 the Pheasant Farm Restaurant won the Remy Martin Cognac/Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year. More business related accolades included the Telstra Business Woman of the Year in 1997 and the Jaguar/Australian Gourmet Traveller Award of Excellence in 1999 and then in 2001 Maggie was overwhelmed to be presented with the Food Media Club's Industry Peer Award.
 
Maggie has written 5 books in total, drawing on her own philosophy of quality produce and the pleasures of the table - Maggie's Farm, Maggie's Orchard and Maggie's Table. The latter won the Best Regional Cook Book in English in 2001, and then against all other languages, replicated its success in the Gourmand World Cook Book Awards in Perigourd, France. In 2003 Maggie's Table was also awarded the Australian Food Media Award for Best Hardcover Recipe Book. For her fourth book, Maggie has compressed her fascination with verjuice into Cooking with Verjuice. For the fifth, she collaborated with Stephanie Alexander and chronicled their Italian cooking school experiences in Stephanie and Maggie's Tuscan Cookbook, which has been translated into 5 languages.  Maggie is proud to be patron of the Vogue Produce Awards, having spent her energies fostering value adding in agriculture.
 
It was a natural extension, with her passion for food and food writing, that Maggie should find herself in front of the camera in her own television series. Currently screening on the ABC, The Cook and The Chef shows Maggie introducing Executive Chef Simon Bryant to her home region and the people who supply her with the produce she has used to create her culinary reputation.

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