Reviews
-Decanter -
Technical Details
- 100% Pinot Noir
- Grant Coulter & Renée Saint-Amour
- US
- Oregon
- Willamette Valley
- Willamette Valley
- A blend of three own-rooted planted vineyards, Lone Feather, Loren and Bednarik.
- 25% New French Oak barrels
- Native yeast fermentation
- 11 Months
- 13.6%
Hundred Suns Wine Pinot Noir Own Rooted Willamette Valley 2023
6% OFF RETAIL!
Grant Coulter spent nine years as winemaker at Beaux Frères before he and his wife Renée Saint-Amour founded Hundred Suns, a boutique McMinnville-based project with an obsessive focus on individual vineyard sites across the Willamette Valley. Grant designs all the labels himself, farms organically, and does everything by hand, including distribution around town. The Own Rooted cuvée is the most conceptually specific wine in the lineup: a deliberate pursuit of non-grafted, phylloxera-free vines planted directly on their own roots, a rarity in modern viticulture that produces wines of a fundamentally different texture and persistence. The 2023 draws from legacy sites across the valley, including the cool-climate Bednarik Vineyard in the Tualatin Hills, planted in 1988 on marine sedimentary soils, and the own-rooted vines of Lone Feather in the McMinnville AVA, blending marine sedimentary and volcanic soil characters into a single harmonious expression. Aged 11 months in neutral French oak with no compromise on freshness, it is one of the most intellectually compelling Pinot Noir builds in the Pacific Northwest right now, from one of the most exciting husband-and-wife projects the Willamette Valley has produced in years. These are tiny production and won’t last long.