Soter Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

Tony Soter arrived in Napa Valley in 1975 with a philosophy degree and very little science. His first job was scrubbing tanks at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Over the next two decades he made wine for, or consulted to, some of Napa’s most admired Cabernet houses: Spottswoode, Shafer, Dalla Valle and Araujo. In 1982 he became Spottswoode’s first winemaker, and when he took over its vineyard he farmed it organically, which was still a rarity in the valley then.

Pinot Noir was the side project that took over. He launched his own label, Etude, in 1982, sold it in 2001, and in 2006 moved for good to Oregon, the state he was born in. By then he and his wife, Michelle, already owned Mineral Springs Ranch, a former cattle ranch in the hills of the Yamhill-Carlton district, and had planted Pinot Noir and Chardonnay along its ridgeline in 2002 and 2003.

The Willamette Valley, which runs south from Portland, is Oregon’s Pinot Noir country. It is cooler and wetter than Napa, and the wines tend to show it, lighter and more savoury than most California Pinot. Like many Oregon winemakers, Soter picks early by California standards. Wine Spectator reported in 2022 that his Pinots seldom go above 13.8% alcohol, and about 40% of the ranch’s Pinot vines are a clone of unknown origin that he calls Heirloom.

Michelle Soter saw the ranch as more than a vineyard. Together they built a biodynamic farm around the vines: Scottish Highland cattle, chickens, pigs and ducks, vegetable gardens and grain, and a falconer whose hawks keep the starlings off the grapes at harvest. The cows supply the manure for the biodynamic preparations, and the ducks keep the slugs down. Demeter certification came in 2016. Michelle died in 2019, and the ranch still runs on the model they built together.

The certificates cover the farming, and it is worth being exact about which farming. Demeter USA lists Soter Vineyards at Mineral Springs Ranch as a certified vineyard, with no winery listing. The USDA organic register lists three Soter vineyards under CCOF, all for crops: Mineral Springs Ranch, the Ribbon Ridge vineyard, and Tarren in the Eola-Amity Hills, which the register records as formerly Soter’s Eola Bluff vineyard. None holds a handling certificate, so the bottles are not sold as organic or Biodynamic wine. Planet Oregon, the house’s lower-priced label, is described as sustainably farmed and makes no organic claim. Separately, since February 2024 Soter Vineyards has been a certified B Corp, a company assessed on how it treats its workers, community and environment as well as on profit.

Mineral Springs Ranch Pinot Noir is the bottle to start with. The Brut Rosé is the one with history: it was the first wine Soter Vineyards ever made, in 1997, and every bottle of the sparkling wine is still riddled by hand at the winery.