“It's the first day of spring, and though the fog and intermittently heavy rain around San Luis Obispo, Calif., might seem dismal to some, Dr. Jean-Pierre Wolff is thrilled. “It could rain for 10 consecutive days and I would be happy,” says the owner of Wolff Vineyards Winery in a voice that—after 37 years in the United States—still retains a slight accent from his youth in Brussels, Belgium. Since Wolff practices water deficit management (“meaning, ‘I use very little water,’” he jokingly explains) on his vineyard, he needs all the help from Mother Nature he can get.

 

Water conservation is only one of the myriad ways in which Wolff is addressing agricultural sustainability on his 125-acre property while producing award-winning wines. But how did a half-French/half-Belgian, former nuclear engineering student with a Walden Ph.D. end up as an ecologically friendly winemaker on the Central Coast of California?

 

“LIKE A CAT, I'VE HAD SEVERAL LIVES.”

 

Wolff began his studies in Belgium by focusing on nuclear engineering and then switched to electrical power. He came to Northern California to study in 1970, got his teaching credentials at the University of California, Berkeley, and from there launched a scientific career that included heading an engineering consulting business in San Francisco, teaching at San Francisco State University, working for Westinghouse, and doing research at Stanford University.

 

“Like a cat, I’ve had several lives,” Wolff says of his evolving career. He also had his own business providing engineering consulting services for the Electrical Power Research Institute. In the early ‘90s, he earned an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. The M.B.A. “gave me a pretty good grounding in the business side of things,” he says. “I called it at that time my ‘intellectual renaissance’—and I definitely became hooked on continuous learning.”

 

Once back into the discipline of learning, Wolff knew he wanted to pursue a Ph.D. and that the school he would choose had to combine academic rigor with the flexibility of a nontraditional program so he wouldn’t have to leave his job.

 

“I looked at the options, and that’s when Walden made sense,” he says. “I was successful from an engineering perspective and a business perspective, so the primary drive was intellectual development, rather than using the degree strictly for professional advancement.”

 

He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences from Walden in 1998. The methodology Wolff developed with his dissertation—Integration of Value Engineering in Total Quality Management (TQM) for Science and Technology Service Enhancement—helped him achieve significant savings at work. Little did he realize then that the knowledge he gained at Walden, through the process of researching and writing his Knowledge Area Modules and dissertation, would be a key factor in the next phase of his life.

 

LIVING HIS DREAM

 

Throughout the course of his career in science, a dream had hovered at the back of Wolff’s mind—the desire to own a vineyard. Though he enjoyed his career, which included 80 percent travel, “I felt there was more to life,” he says. “I wanted to pursue something else at an age when I would still have the get-up-and-go.”

 

Finally, in 1999—fighting the “comfort zone” of career success—Wolff purchased both the Edna Valley vineyard and the tiny winery on the property. He soon found himself involved full time in his new venture.

 

“Initially we thought of a softer transition,” he says, “but I quickly had thoughts of expansion and upgrades. The property was only halfdeveloped—about 55 acres of chardonnay were planted—and the rest was grazing land. The farming practice was the old, traditional approach, and I thought, well, I have the knowledge and the business background to perhaps change things.”

 

Wolff had long been interested in protecting the environment. Through his work he had been heavily involved in environmentally friendly, alternative energy solutions such as solar power and windmills. Assessing the depleted state of the land on his vineyard, he realized that he now had the perfect opportunity to bring this interest to the forefront.

 

“That was the catalyst for finding a better way of doing things,” he says. “It forced me to go the extra mile.” He also wanted to protect and restore unique aspects of the property, including miles of creeks. His dream expanded to a vision of turning the property into a showcase of environmentally friendly viticulture and natural habitat restoration.

 

Despite the unexpectedly fast immersion into their new life, Wolff and his wife, Elke, knew they had made the right choice after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “That really put it in perspective for us,” he says. “We felt that this transition to farming was going to give us a more healthy, stable lifestyle—reconnecting with the land rather than traveling to countries that weren’t always friendly to the U.S.”

 

SUCCESS IS A FAMILY EFFORT

 

The vineyard—today a misty landscape of rolling green hills touched by low-lying clouds—specializes in cool-climate grapes, with 55 acres of chardonnay, 37 acres of pinot noir, and 12 acres of teroldego, syrah, Riesling, and the first cool-climate petite sirah planted on the Central Coast. Wolff ’s petite sirahs have won several golds, and the chardonnays are consistently highly rated by Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator. “I get a lot of people who are the ABCs—‘Anything But Chardonnay,’” Wolff jokes, “and my mission in life is to make converts out of them.”

 

Wolff and Elke are co-owners of the business. “I couldn’t do it without her,” Wolff says. “It’s really a team effort—with her CPA background, she keeps the books, and keeps my optimism in check.” Their two adult sons (from previous marriages), Clint and Mark, work full time in the tasting room, as assistant winemakers, and in facilities management.

 

Wolff is the winemaker—he doesn’t use a consultant; however, a vineyard management company oversees the day-to-day vineyard operations so that Wolff doesn’t have to hire the labor directly. All the harvesting and pruning is done by hand—“I don’t believe in machines for these two activities,” Wolff says. He notes that the increasing scarcity of trained farmworkers in California has prompted him to get involved with lobbying on immigration reform, agriculture reform, and farm bills.

 

Wolff produces 3,000 cases of his estate wine a year (with 12 bottles per case). He also has a private label program. He sells about 60 percent of his grapes to other California wineries, but, he says, “As we increase our wine production every year, I keep more and more for ourselves.” However, he plans to level off at about 5,000 cases in the future, explaining, “I want to keep it small, family-owned.” The bulk of his wine sales are within California; distributors handle out-of-state sales.

 

Retail sales from his wine club and tasting room represent about 60 percent of his wine sales, and the rest is wholesale. He also exports some wine to Europe; he is an honorary trade attaché with the Belgian government, specializing in technology, and his wines are served at the Royal Palace in Brussels.

 

LIFELONG LEARNING, LIFELONG TEACHING

 

Upon purchasing the vineyard, Wolff went to the University of California, Davis and took all of the postgraduate classes on winemaking he could, on a non-credit basis, and got hands-on experience by training with the winemaker who was on the property at that time. He also took courses in ecologically friendly grapegrowing techniques, and seminars on water quality, wildlife habitat enhancement, and so forth, sponsored by environmental agencies. He describes the process as “a turbocharged, fast-tracked learning curve.”

 

“People ask me, ‘What are you doing with a Ph.D., making wine?’” Wolff says. But he credits his quick career transition to the skills he obtained in his doctoral program.

 

“You learn how to learn,” he says. “It changes how your mind processes information.” More specifically, Wolff used the three components of the Walden Knowledge Area Module learning process—research papers that focus on the breadth, depth, and application of a topic—to learn all he could about sustainable alternatives such as water deficit management, and then to do trials on his property. He has also used his dissertation methodology extensively while designing his winery, tasting room, and irrigation system.

 

Wolff continues to learn, while promoting the evolution of sustainable winemaking techniques, by hosting ongoing research at the vineyard, including

• A grant-based Biologically Integrated Farming Systems project with the USDA and the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the use of herbicides and pesticides
• Projects addressing integrated pest management, an organic way of reducing pests
• Research on the use of catfish emulsion as fertilizer
• A Ph.D. student from Spain performing research on fungal disease on vines
• Working with chemical companies to experiment with new “soft” pesticides that are targeted to one insect

 

The wine Wolff produces “could qualify as organic,” he says, “but I don’t do it, because I like to try too many different things, and I would be very restricted if I were certified organic.” Aside from a small amount of a food preservative to reduce the possibility of microorganisms developing in the wine, his wine has no additives.

 

At the same time, Wolff shares the knowledge he’s gained. He teaches a course on “Sustainable, Organic, and Biodynamic Wine Growing Practices” as part of Cal Poly’s extension program and for its Osher program (for students over 50), noting that his Walden degree “has helped with the credentials for that.” He is also a visiting lecturer at a Cal Poly economics class, discussing the economic aspects of sustainability. “If you cannot sustain a living on the land, then you succumb to developers,” he points out. He also teaches introductory winemaking courses at his vineyard for Hancock College and for the Elderhostel program.

 

Wolff holds a number of community leadership positions: He’s on the Board of Directors of the Agriculture Task Force for San Luis Obispo County, serves as vice president of the Central Coast Wine Growers’ Association and vice president of the Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District, and is on the executive advisory board of Cal Poly’s Sustainable Agriculture Resource Consortium.

 

“He’s an activist in the wonderful sense of the word. He doesn’t wait around for things to happen to him,” notes Stephanie Wald, watershed project manager for Central Coast Salmon Enhancement.

 

More informally, he hosts and gives talks at the vineyard to environmental groups, city and county officials, university students, and the Audubon Society participants in the annual Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival. He also gives presentations to groups such as Rotary Club and the Central Coast Vineyard Team, and, of course, he interacts with the visitors to the vineyard—several hundred each weekend.

 

Wolff has also worked to include neighboring vineyard owners. As farmers tend to want to be left alone, he explains, initially he was viewed with some suspicion. But, he says, “I’ve been able to gain their confidence in a very short time, and to get some local residents involved in these restoration projects. And it’s been good for viticulture because we organize tours and we invite the press and politicians to see some of the good things that wine grape growers do.”

 

“I think he’s just a really shining example,” says Margy Lindquist, district conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. “Vineyard people in this county are very conservation-minded, but he’s just leaps and bounds beyond.”

 

SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE SOUL

 

Although the highest point on the property boasts a broad view extending to San Luis Obispo, Wolff built his house lower down, next to the tasting room, because, he says, “I like to feel that I’m close to the vineyard.”

 

The ecologically sensitive house is insulated with fire-resistant recycled newspaper, the wood beams are recycled, and the underground cellar has a passive cooling system so Wolff doesn’t have to use air conditioning. The large building includes an office and storage space for the business, as well as a banquet room for private parties.

 

Visiting wineries with his family while he was growing up in Europe, Wolff says, gave him “childhood memories of the line being very blurry between the winery and the house where people lived. So that’s what I tried to re-create here—keeping it all in more of a family feeling rather than big separations between the business and the house.”

 

With his vineyard and winery, Wolff is ultimately reaching for something more intangible than physical sustainability. “I think people in general are striving to go back to simple things,” he says, “so we give that opportunity to reconnect a little bit with nature.”

 

 

 

 

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