Shadow Mountain Vineyard History

Shadow Mountain Vineyards was established in 1998 by Melvin & JoDonna Cooper. This beautiful vineyard is situated on 24 acres of pristine property on the East slope of the Oregon Coast Range, looking out toward the Coburg Hills. During the day you can see Hayworths Ridge, and at night the lights of the Eugene Airport create a spectacular glow.

Shadow Mountain was inspired by Jonathon Cooper, Mel & JoDonna's son, who studied agriculture at OSU. After evaluating the property location, light, and soil, it was determined to be perfectly suited to harvest wine grapes. Since then, through careful planning and constant attention to the care of grapes, Shadow Mountain has been producing top quality Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir wine.

We take pride in being a Salmon Safe and LIVE certified winery. (LIVE uses international standards of sustainable viticultural and enological practices in both wine-grape and wine production.) Read more about it here...

About our Vineyard

We create the highest quality fruit possible in Oregon's moderate climate by orienting all of our grape rows running North and South. This is important because it maximizes sunlight to both the East and West sides of the vines as the sun rises and sets.

We used vertical shoot positioning (VSP) when we built the trellising in the vineyard, again because it maximizes the sunlight into the vines and the sunlight directly into the fruit. VSP trellises are designed to keep the fruiting zones close to the ground (approximately 28 inches high) to get heat reflection from the ground.

The vines tend to grow straight up, but require the use of catch wires to hold them there as they get taller and heavier. Once the vines reach about seven feet in overall height they are cut to limit additional growth. We don't want the vine to get so tall it starts to shade the neighboring rows. Spacing of the vines is important. With VSP we space the vines 5 feet apart in the row, while the rows are spaced 9 feet apart to avoid shading.