Banner Elk Winery Hosts Celebration for Dick Wolfe’s New Memoir August 23

“Climbing Kilimanjaro at 70” is the memoir of a man accustomed to making his dreams come true. Dick Wolfe—or Richard A. Wolfe, Ph.D. on the cover of the book—has accomplished many things during his lifetime.

Wolfe is a nuclear engineer with a recent patent of a process to remove the mercury pollutants from coal; an award-winning vintner who founded the Banner Elk Winery, the first winery in the High Country; and is also an athlete who checked off another item on his “bucket list” with a climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest peak in Africa—a climb that included the celebration of his 70th birthday on the way to the top.

The Banner Elk Winery will host a pre-publication celebration for Wolfe’s new memoir on Monday, August 23, at 6:30 p.m. Five courses prepared by Tina Houston, chef at Reid’s Catering, will be served, paired with the winery’s award-winning wines. The cost is $75 per person and reservations are required.

For those who can’t make the dinner, there is still the opportunity to win a wine tasting for two and a bottle of wine at the Banner Elk Winery.

Interested individuals can register to win with the purchase of an autographed copy of Wolfe’s memoir at Black Bear Books in Boone during the week of Thursday to Thursday, August 19 to 26.

As a teenager in the coal-mining town of Sophia, W.Va., Wolfe worked as a projectionist in the local movie theatre. He showed the movie The Snows of Kilimanjaro and watched it, he said, “about 40 times.” Vowing to “someday climb that mountain,” little did he realize it would take him until he was 70 to accomplish that dream.

Wolfe has not been idle in those 70 years, however. As a child, he walked to the coal mine in the afternoons to meet his father and became fascinated by the process of “cleaning” the coal for shipment. As his father suffered from the effects of black lung, “clean coal” took on new meaning. From the time he was small, Wolfe’s father emphasized to him the importance of a good education “so he wouldn’t be stuck in the mines.”

Wolfe earned a degree from Virginia Tech in chemical engineering, financed by a scholarship earned by participating in a science fair. His first job, with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission on the energy supply system for the Apollo Moon Mission, convinced him he needed more education. Wolfe then commuted to the University of Cincinnati, taking classes at night and eventually earning his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering. In more than 50 years in the energy industry, Wolfe has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy in nuclear waste management and clean coal technology and is the founder and president of his own clean coal technology company. He recently patented a process to remove 100 percent of the mercury pollutants from coal.

Winemaking and cultivating vineyards are values and skills Wolfe gained from Italian immigrants near his boyhood home. Beginning in Virginia, then drawn to the High Country by an offer to head a new program at ASU, Wolfe is the father of the emerging wine industry in this area. The Banner Elk Winery in Banner Elk is supported by 35 local vineyards, all growing between 4,000 and 5,000 feet. His search for grapes that would thrive in the soil conditions, climate and high altitudes of this area took him to the mountains of Europe, the high elevations of France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. This odyssey, and the superior wines engendered by these unique climatic conditions, will be the story told in Wolfe’s next book.

For more information about Banner Elk Winery’s pre-publication celebration or Wolfe’s book “Climbing Kilimanjaro at 70,” call 828-260-1790 828-260-1790  or click to www.bannerelkwinery.com.