“We find that most people have never heard of walnut butter.”
— JOANNA MALSON Wellnut Farms
The Etchepare family owns a 5,000-acre orchard in Colusa County, with about 60% walnuts. At left, Leon Etchepare enjoys eating Wellnut Farms walnut butter, as do his children: daughter Lena and, above, son Cade.
walnut butter recipes, changed their minds. “Kevin and I were like, ‘Hey, why not? …There’s not really a mainstream walnut butter on the market.’” They started with the basic Walnut Board recipes, and after a big investment of time and money, the pair came up with the perfect blend of ingredients to make the butters suitable for retail sale. “It took about a year and a half of formulations and trials and studies to figure out how to get walnuts shelf stable,” Etchepare said. And because each nut has unique amounts of oil and moisture, it took another few years to get each batch’s texture consistent. Their resulting formula includes a touch of palm oil to keep the butters smooth, shelf stable and consistent, as well as sea salt, natural f lavors and just enough cane sugar (2 to 3 grams per serving) to cut any bitter bite. Making the butter Because Etchepare’s family farm grows 12 million
pounds of walnuts each year, only a fraction of them are made into butters. After harvest, these nuts are hulled, washed and dried onsite, and then go to an offsite sheller before being returned, where a small staff roasts and grinds them, mixes in the other ingredients and then jars and labels the butters. Initially an outside company made the butters. But in July of 2019, Etchepare launched his own co-packer, Nutopia Foods, which makes the butters as needed in small batches to ensure freshness. To warrant the investment, keep his staff busy and help sma l l businesses, Nutopia a lso makes other companies’ nut butters with pistachios, pecans, hazelnuts, almonds and cashews. “In a utopic world, we all get along and help out each other and treat each other well,” Etchepare said, in explaining his business philosophy and the origin of the Nutopia name.
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