Boy meets girl. Then boy meets wine and girl meets art. Years and vintages later that take the duo around the globe and back, boy and girl (also known as Brian Marcy and Clare Carver) planted their dreams (grapes and home roots) on a farm in Gaston, Ore., and kicked off Big Table Farm winery in 2006. The working farm of 70 acres is home to poultry, pigs, cows and egg-laying chicken raised and ran by the two of them. Marcy and Carver also make the wine and award-winning label art, respectively. Each label features a solo farm animal or aspect and are fully handmade, from the letterpress to cutting and gluing the paper to the bottle.
The wines are equally deliberate, small lot vineyard selections and sold from a single source (the winery). Unfiltered and unfined, the 2012 Pinot Gris (from Willamette Valley’s Wirtz Vineyard) is indisputably orange. Pinot Gris/Grigio is a darker skinned grape variety by nature (both translate to gray in English) so when Marcy aged this juice on its skins, color was extracted along with some tannin. The nose is ripe with raspberry, cherry and tomato leaf, savory and robust across a wide spectrum of colors. The palate has a weight not normally seen in white wines (probably because it’s orange), with approachable acidity, sharp cherry essence and red berry notes, finishing with a brisk hug of tannin.
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