Notes from Hundred Suns:

"When we met over 16 years ago, we agreed on a fundamental idea: we wanted to build a life together that felt like an adventure. We left California for Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where Grant first worked as assistant winemaker at Hamacher wines and then spent the bulk of 10 years as assistant winemaker and then winemaker at Beaux Freres. Those ten years were rich. Renée continued teaching high school while Grant gained intimate understanding and appreciation of the soils, climates, and personalities (both land and people) of the valley. We started a family. We made good friends, drank beautiful wines, and dreamed of a life that would bring us more together than apart.

In 2015, we sold our house in Portland, scraped together every penny we had, and moved to a fixer-upper in the the valley so that we could build Hundred Suns. Eventually, Grant moved on from being winemaker at Beaux Freres to overseeing the vineyards and making the wines for Flaneur Wines, and Renée swapped the classroom for the cellar and running of the day-to-day business. From winemaking, to label design, website building, and even wax dipping bottles by hand, every aspect of this process has our fingerprints on it because it is just the two of us.

In 2018 we bought a 4.5 acre property in the Eola-Amity hills where the 50 year-old vineyard was our children’s backyard. In 2020, disease forced us to remove those old vines, and now we look forward to replanting in spring of 2022. Farming this site will bring us even closer to the wines that we have the pleasure of making and managing together. So far it has been a beautiful adventure indeed, and we’re just getting started.

The Bednarik vineyard sits on a majestic hill in the cool Coast Range outside of Cherry Grove. The 6 acre, own-rooted vineyard was planted at 350 elevation on a south/southwest exposure to Pommard and Wadensvil in 1988 by William Bednarik. When Grant’s friends, the Mora brothers, took over the site in 2016, they called him to ask him to take a look. On the first visit, Grant immediately saw the potential of this site-a cooler nature to balance oncoming warmer vintages, older vines, and a perfect aspect. With the Mora’s on board to take the vineyard organic, Grant knew we had to jump. Bednarik has now become a bedrock site for Hundred Suns."