Winemaker Wynne Solomon grew up around vineyards in the Sonoma County community of Windsor.

“I learned how to ride a bike in a nearby vineyard,” she told Noozhawk.

She recalled growing up with a passion for cooking — and chemistry, a key component of winemaking.

After graduating from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Wynne worked in San Luis Obispo County’s Edna Valley, both for Stephen Dooley of Stephen Ross Wine Cellars, “who taught me pinot noir and chardonnay winemaking,” and then for Ryan Deovlet, who sourced those same grapes from vineyards in Santa Barbara County, she noted.

From San Luis Obispo County, Solomon relocated to Melville Winery, where she learned estate winemaking from owner/winemaker Chad Melville.

In 2018, she landed her first estate winemaking gig at Peake Ranch Winery just four years after its first vintage, working alongside founding winemaker Paul Lato during the 2019 vintage.

At Peake, located at 7290 Santa Rosa Road in Buellton, Solomon has continued her focus on chardonnay and pinot noir.

Also key to the winery team is general manager/vineyard manager Mike Anderson, who started at Peake in 2017 after more than 30 years as a researcher, author and educator at his alma mater, UC Davis. He also managed the university’s Oakville Station Vineyard in Napa.

Anderson attributes early years working in his family’s grape nursery as the driving force behind his lifetime interest in viticulture.

Gill and John Wagner, owners of Peake Ranch, first met Anderson when they delved into winemaking classes at UC Davis.

Around 2000, the couple invested in their first vineyard, the 150-acre Sierra Madre Vineyard, one of Santa Barbara County’s oldest vineyards, Solomon told me.

While Gallo purchased Sierra Madre from founder and longtime strawberry famer Doug Circle in 2018, the Wagners partnered into the site as well.

John Wagner grew up in Ventura County, where — like Anderson — he was an early student of agriculture while laboring in his family’s avocado and lemon orchards. He earned both bachelor and master’s degrees in physics at UCLA and works in the financial sector.

Following their Sierra Madre investment, the Wagners partnered with friend Sebastian Sterpa to plant grapes on the hillsides of Sterpa’s cattle ranch along West Highway 246. Today, that site is the popular John Sebastiano Vineyard, a source for Peake Ranch and many other winemakers.

Peake Ranch Vineyard encompasses 48 acres of vines on 105 acres — part of the 1,600-acre parcel first owned by the artist Channing Peake (hence the name), and then, in part, by industry pioneer Richard Sanford, who purchased 400 acres.

Channing Peake, who died in 1989 at age 79, married Catherine “Katy” Schott in 1938, a union with a prominent family that afforded him the financial freedom to pursue his art.

An accomplished horsewoman with a passion for ranch life, Schott used part of her inheritance to buy 1,600 acres in Buellton where she and her husband established Rancho Jabali, Spanish for “wild boar.”

Decades later, Sanford would christen the acreage fronting Santa Rosa Road as “El Jabali” in a nod to the site’s ranching history. When he sold his namesake winery to the Terlato Wine Group in 2005, Sanford retained El Jabali vineyard for Alma Rosa Winery.

Only a creek — no fence — divides Peake Ranch from the Alma Rosa property, Anderson said.

Alma Rosa’s vineyards line the hills that lie parallel to Peake. The latter’s site covers a hillside with 360-degree views.

Between the three vineyards, team Peake Ranch oversees 250 acres. Anderson employs 15 full-time workers who farm both Alma Rosa and Peake Ranch vineyards, he said.

“I prefer to keep them employed year-round rather than be just seasonal workers,” he explained.

Anderson said he convinced Wagner to increase Peake’s overall grape yields by grafting over some pinot noir vines to two clones each of grenache and syrah vines.

The production facility includes 12,000 square feet of barrel and winemaking space that Solomon had a hand in designing and came on line in 2019, she said.

“Our best goal, utilizing slow growth, is between 5,000 and 7,000 cases per year,” she said. Current case production is 5,000 cases.

The largest single wine produced is a Santa Rita Hills blend of Sebastiano and Peake Ranch vineyards.

“John Sebastiano has a higher elevation and Peake is more protected,” Solomon said. “The result is a nice blend of geography.”

We tasted through the current vintage of 2020 chardonnays, the grape that she calls the “star of the Santa Rita Hills.”

While one heat spike is typical, and two can be managed, that vintage endured three spikes, which presented several challenges, Solomon noted. Even though it’s a white grape, it regularly ripens after pinot noir.

She requested that Sierra Madre Vineyard, planted in the early 1970s, be replanted, and in 2022, more of those new vines were coming online.

“Sierra Madre has more fog and the vineyard is sand, versus different soils at both Peake and Sebastiano, where days start with fog but turn warmer,” Solomon explained.

In comparison to the Peake Ranch and Sebastiano chardonnays, Sierra Madre’s displayed a slight heft, we both noted.

“It’s a real climate shift, and (our heat) is not just a heat spell,” she said.

California’s wet winter, followed by an unseasonably cool May and June, meant grapes were slow to mature.

When we met in late July, Solomon anticipated the current harvest would start two to four weeks later than that of last year.

Winemaking requires “endless learning,” and a day-to-day focus on nature, Solomon said. She was poised to launch a pre-harvest berry analysis for a database to track vintage-to-vintage changes in each vineyard.

“This will be key to better understand climate change,” she said.

The 2020 Santa Rita Hills pinot noir blend of Peake and Sebastiano vineyards displays distinct aromatics. The pinot noir from just Peake I found to be “quiet” while the Sebastiano is hefty and fruitier.

The “Bellis Noir” Red Blend combines 44% syrah, 52% grenache and 4% pinot noir in Solomon’s attempt to lighten up a classic Rhone blend.

The 2019 Peake Sebastiano Syrah is clone 383, one that’s “one of the last picks to come in,” Solomon said.

“It’s a pinot noir producer’s syrah — delicate, not extracted and very elegant,” she added.

Both the syrah and grenache are elite cool-climate reds, elegant on the nose and balanced from first sip to long finish.

The last in my lineup was the stunningly aromatic 2022 Grüner Veltliner from Sebastiano. Solomon produced it “on the fly” when another winemaker bowed out of the fruit, she recalled. It’s light, fresh and vibrant — and my new favorite grüner.

As far as what Peake Ranch keeps for the Peake label, Solomon estimated that between one quarter and one half of the 50 acres goes to the “home” label and the remainder is sold to other producers.