Why it matters
The producer
White Walnut Estate is a family-run Dundee Hills vineyard built from a neglected walnut orchard. Chris Mazepink bought the property in 2013, then planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in 2015 and 2016. The resulting bottles come from a compact 6.3-acre site, where vines grow beside productive old walnut trees rather than on newly cleared ground.
Mazepink had previously led winemaking at Archery Summit, Shea Wine Cellars and Benton Lane. At White Walnut, that background meets a vineyard planted with many selections and clones gathered over 21 years, so Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are assembled from a deliberately varied field rather than a single uniform planting.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
White Walnut sits in Oregon’s Dundee Hills, and the regional name appears on bottles such as the 2023 Dundee Hills Chardonnay and 2022 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir. This is the wider geographic frame of the range; more narrowly named road and block wines then take the same two grapes into separate bottlings.
The estate’s organic and biodynamic certifications put farming at the centre of those labels. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the two varieties planted here, so the place is encountered through a white wine and a red wine rather than through a broad catalogue of grapes.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The vineyard’s numerous Chardonnay and Pinot Noir selections are grown and harvested together in a polyculture approach. Their mixed material enters fermentation as a combined crop, which can bring several fruit, floral and structural voices into one wine instead of isolating clone by clone.
Mazepink also uses whole clusters, native yeasts and fermentation vessels made from wood, concrete and terracotta. Whole clusters can add stem-derived spice and tannin to Pinot Noir; native yeast fermentations can unfold at their own pace; and the different vessels provide alternatives to a single oak-led texture. The practical result is a cellar built to preserve varied fruit and texture from the field.
Wines to know
The range in view
White Walnut’s range moves from Dundee Hills wines toward road, vineyard or block names, with amphora bottlings adding a vessel-led branch. The 2023 Dundee Hills Chardonnay is a regional blend, while South Blocks Pinot Noir draws on all 12 distinct sections of the estate vineyard. Those labels separate a broader regional view from a red assembled across the property’s internal divisions.
The 2022 South Blocks Pinot Noir was bottled unfined and unfiltered, retaining its full set of estate components in bottle. Chardonnay appears in Dundee Hills, Worden Hill Road, North Blocks and vineyard-named forms; Pinot Noir appears as Dundee Hills, Worden Hill Road, South Blocks, Amphora and vineyard wines. The useful distinction is not a presumed ranking, but whether the label points to region, named location, block or fermentation vessel.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the 2023 Dundee Hills Chardonnay. It is the regional Chardonnay in the range, and its aromas move from nectarine, honeysuckle and bee pollen toward citrus peel. The palate has layered richness, while lemon-drop notes remain through the persistent finish. It puts Chardonnay, the Dundee Hills appellation and White Walnut’s unfined, unfiltered approach into one bottle without requiring a block or vessel comparison first.