72 OCTOBER 2020
AS CLARE CARVER, farmer, artist, and currently host of this
party, passes a bowl of sage-flecked potatoes to her husband,
winemaker Brian Marcy, she recounts how the couple first met
sea salt entrepreneur Ben Jacobsen, who sits at the far end of
the table. It was nearly a decade ago, she says, while filming an
episode of a show called Man Fire Food. The title alone makes
everyone snort with laughter. Cellar hands Ben Luker, who is
Australian and very tall, and Mark Kulpins, a Midwesterner who
used to work in finance, cheerfully debate who will get to drink
more of the exceptional Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that Carver
and Marcy have laid out—and who will be tonight’s designated
driver. (The two live in the same nearby town.) And Lily Gray,
a North Carolina native who formerly worked for Marcy as a
part-time cellar assistant, tells how she first discovered Big Table
Farm: by selling Marcy’s wine at a shop in Raleigh. “I sent out
50 cover letters to wineries, and Brian was the first one to writeme back,” she says. She came to Oregon with a backpack and
$300 in her pocket.
The gathered guests, mostly staff and old friends, are what
Carver refers to as “the Big Table family.” Every fall, Marcy
and Carver thank everyone for their hard work by cooking an
enormous feast at the end of harvest season. It’s not just for the
folks who work the harvest—those who put in long days in the
winery and are often soaking wet, cold, and exhausted—though
they certainly deserve it. It’s also for the ones who pack the wine
into boxes and fulfill web orders. The farm chores, though—
gathering eggs, feeding the pigs, and whatever else needs to be
done—Carver does herself.
Carver and Marcy feed the crew every day at lunch anyway,
since Big Table Farm is five miles down a long gravel driveway
and another five miles to the closest town; that’s not uncommon
at wineries during harvest season. But this meal is much more FOOD STYLING: ANDREA SLONECKER; PROP STYLING: KIRA CORBIN