SLO’s Wolff Vineyards experiments with wine

Edna Valley is known largely for its coastal-influenced chardonnay and pinot noir, but at Wolff Vineyards in San Luis Obispo, vintner Jean-Pierre Wolff is also forging a reputation for grapes such as petite sirah and teroldego.

The teroldego — pronounced “teh-ROHL-deh-goh” — offers most visitors their first taste of a grape rarely found outside the Trentino-Alto Adige region in northwest Italy. It’s an inky, dark wine with intense fruit flavors balanced by bright acidity, woody aromas and soft tannins.

Teroldego was first planted on the property off Orcutt Road by then-owner Romeo “Meo” Zuech, winemaker at Piedra Creek Winery, as a nod to his origins in the region. When Wolff purchased the vineyard from Zuech in 1999, he liked the uncommon variety and decided to plant more.

Planting petite sirah, more commonly found in warmer climates such as Paso Robles, was a bit of a leap of faith, Wolff acknowledged. It’s a gamble that’s paid off.

Wolff Vineyards’ petite sirah, with its full body, thick tannins and zingy acidity, shows more pepper, spice and smooth elegance compared to the powerful, jammy fruit of warmer-climate versions. It has proved particularly popular in the tasting room and earned many accolades over the years, including best of class at the Los Angeles International Wine Competition in May and the California State Fair in July.

That sort of experimentation is typical for Wolff, whose scientific background spans engineering, consulting, teaching and research. When he bought the vineyard and pivoted to viticulture, he got hands-on training from Zuech, who tutored him in the old European methods of minimal-intervention winemaking.

Wolff, who was born in Belgium and raised in France’s Alsace-Lorraine region, recalled Zuech calling his first efforts “not bad for a Frenchman.”

Some of Wolff’s first experiments involved moving away from conventional farming to more ecologically sustainable practices. Wolff Vineyards — which Wolff runs with wife Elke, son Mark and son-in-law Clint Grubb-Wolff was one of the beta sites for the Sustainability in Practice certification program and regularly engages in trials and research projects with Cal Poly and various agricultural and environmental groups.

“Some projects fail miserably,” Wolff acknowledged. “But what has been rewarding is people recognize and support those efforts.”

That includes not just customers but his wine industry peers, who voted Wolff San Luis Obispo County’s Wine Industry Person of the Year in July, in large part for his work with half a dozen local sustainability-oriented boards and councils including the Cal Poly Center for Sustainability.

At his winery, Wolff uses birds of prey to control pests and works to restore fish and turtle habitats at the two creeks bordering the 125-acre vineyard. He also dry-farms 55 acres of chardonnay plants.

Those vines, planted by Edna Valley pioneer Andy MacGregor, are now 40 years old, yielding a fuller-bodied wine with more concentrated flavor. “It’s just like old-vine zin,” Wolff explained.

Wolff Vineyards’ Dijon clone pinot noir is a classic Burgundy-style wine, mixing strawberry and black cherry flavors with earth, cola and light pepper. The winery’s syrah tips the scale from stewed plums toward pepper, smoke and minerality.

Wolff also produces a dry, Alsatian-style riesling — “When you’re married to a German, it’s against the law not to make a riesling,” he quipped — that combines floral and tropical citrus flavors with just a hint of sweetness. And joining the popular Red Wolf blend this year is White Wolf, a refreshing, aromatic blend of viognier, roussanne, semillion and reisling with notes of melon and honeysuckle.

“I knew I had something special here,” Wolff said. “In how many appellations can you go to the beach, get sand between your toes, then within 10, 12 minutes go wine tasting in a vineyard. You’re going to have a hard time finding that anywhere else.”

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 11:26 AM with the headline "SLO’s Wolff Vineyards experiments with wine."