It’s the first day of spring, and though some might find the fog and intermittently heavy rain around San Luis Obispo, Calif., dismal, 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 PhD end up as an ecologically friendly winemaker on the central coast of California?
Education and Career
Wolff began his studies in Belgium, focusing first on nuclear engineering and then switching 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, “and I definitely became hooked on continuous learning.”
Once back into the discipline of learning, Wolff knew he wanted to pursue a PhD 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 was already successful from an engineering perspective and a business perspective,” he says,
“so the primary drive was intellectual development.”
He earned his PhD in Applied Management and Decision Sciences from Walden University, an accredited online university, 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.
Lifelong Learning
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, while training with the winemaker who was on the property at that time. He also took courses in ecologically friendly grape-growing 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 PhD, 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.”
Wolff continues to learn, while promoting the evolution of sustainable winemaking techniques, by hosting ongoing research with government agencies, private companies, and universities. Current projects include research on organic pest reduction, the reduction of herbicides and pesticides, the use of catfish emulsion as fertilizer, fungal disease on vines, and new “soft” pesticides.
Teaching
and Leading
At the same time, Wolff shares his knowledge by teaching a course on “Sustainable, Organic, and Biodynamic Wine-Growing Practices” as part of the California Polytechnic State University 's extension program and for its Osher program (for students over 50), noting that his PhD “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, and teaches introductory winemaking courses at his vineyard for Hancock College and for the Elderhostel program.
More informally, Wolff hosts and gives talks at the vineyard to environmental groups, city and county officials, students, and groups such as the Rotary Club and the Central Coast Vineyard Team. He is also an honorary trade attaché with the Belgian government, specializing in technology, and his wines are served at the Royal Palace in Brussels. And, of course, he interacts with the visitors to the vineyard—several hundred each weekend.
Wolff holds a number of community leadership positions, including serving as vice president of the Central Coast Wine Growers’ Association and vice president of the Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District.
Stephanie Wald, who has partnered with Wolff in her role as watershed project manager for Central Coast Salmon Enhancement, says, “He’s an activist in the wonderful sense of the word. He doesn’t wait around for things to happen to him.”