Cooper Mountain Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

Robert Gross was a psychiatrist who made wine as a hobby with colleagues at the University of Washington in the early 1970s, until he tasted an early bottle of David Lett’s Oregon Pinot Noir. In 1978 he and his wife, Corrine, moved the family to Oregon and planted Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on a slope of Cooper Mountain, ten miles west of Portland, on the farm where she had grown up riding horses.

His route to biodynamics ran through his medical practice. Gross had studied acupuncture and homeopathy to treat his patients’ pain, and he came to think of a vine the way he thought of a person: strengthen the whole organism and it resists disease better. The family says Oregon Tilth certified the vineyard organic in 1995, and that in 1999 Cooper Mountain became the first winery in the Pacific Northwest to earn Demeter certification.

In the early 2000s Nicolas Joly, the French biodynamic winemaker, planned a visit, and Gross put the word out to a few other growers. More than 100 people from the wine industry came.

In 2002 Cooper Mountain became, it says, the first US winery to win label approval for a wine with no added sulfites. The Oregon Wine Board gave Gross its Founders Award in 2023, and he runs the business with his daughter, Barbara. The family now farms 200 acres of vines across seven vineyards, and Demeter lists Cooper Mountain as both a biodynamic farm and a winery. The winery says every bottle is made from biodynamic grapes. On the US organic register, though, 24 of its 27 wines are listed as made with organic grapes, the category that allows added sulfites, so they cannot carry the USDA organic seal. The exceptions are the no-sulfite Life Pinot Noirs.