Hundred Suns Winery
Winemaker: Renée Saint-Amour & Grant Coulter
Location: 1445 Northeast Miller St. #D1, McMinnville, OR 97128
Instagram: @hundredsunswine
Website: https://hundredsunswine.com
OUR MISSION:
Source fruit from growers we like, trust, and respect. Choose growers who share with us a history in the valley, an ideology aimed at quality in the vineyard, and a desire to farm with an eye on the environment.
Push boundaries and take risks. Experiment with and understand each vineyard and how our practices in the cellar can accentuate the site and the vintage.
Trust the process and ourselves. Explore new techniques of fermentation and aging because we know our experience will guide us. Manipulate the wines as little as possible, and let the vineyards and vintages speak for themselves. As such, our wines are fermented with indigenous yeast, native malolactic bacteria, and without the use of unnatural additives.
Make wines we want to drink. Create delicious wines that can be enjoyed now or for years to come.
In 2006, Grant (who had earned an Enology & Viticulture degree and worked harvests at home and abroad) and Renée headed for the Willamette Valley to join its community of world class Pinot Noir producers, always with a pocket dream of someday pioneering a project of their own.
Grant’s 10 years working in cellars (Hamacher, Beaux Freres, Flaneur) and vineyards gave him the experience to forge a path of his own and the curiosity to want to push the limits.
In 2015, their dream was realized when Renée left her job in education, they sold their house, and put all the money into their first 450 cases.
Since then, they’ve grown Hundred Suns through experience and grit (the two of them still manage all aspects of the winery). In the cellar, high vigilance allows for low intervention, and an understanding of how things work allows for the deeper experimentation that makes their wines distinct. Their goal still remains for the wines to be classically delicious with a little something special you can’t put your finger on.