Derrek Vipond

Training at Oregon State University gave Derrek Vipond the technical base that later carried into the cellar. Since 2019, he has been winemaker at Walla Walla Vintners, where the work is built on blending, tasting, refining, and waiting — the repeated, exacting tasks that turn a season’s fruit into a finished bottle.

At Walla Walla Vintners, the craft sits where Vipond says it should: part art, part science, part blue collar hard work, and part trade job. The work depends on physical repetition and quiet precision, with white linen service as the other end of the chain — a reminder that what starts in vineyard and cellar is meant to arrive at the table with formality. “My parents got me into wine,” he says, and that family link remains part of the path behind the work.

At Walla Walla Vintners, Vipond’s signature wines show the range of his cellar work. 2022 Walla Walla Vintners ‘Old Vines’ Cabernet Sauvignon, 2022 Walla Walla Vintners ‘Vottavo’, 2023 Walla Walla Vintners ‘Woven Fields’ Red Wine, and 2022 Walla Walla Vintners ‘Cut Bank Estate’ Cabernet Sauvignon each carry different emphasis, but together they point to a consistent house style built on structure, layering, and place.

The clearest markers of recognition here are the role itself and the named 2023 Walla Walla Vintners ‘Woven Fields’ Red Wine, 2025. In a trade where patience matters as much as polish, those points speak to continuity: the daily discipline behind each vintage and the long view that shapes a winemaking career. Class of 2007.