SPENCER, W.Va. -- People told him he would never be able to grow a good crop of wine in West Virginia.

Almost three years later, Bryan M. George is proving them wrong.

George has been running a 38-acre farm and the organic "Vu ja de" vineyard in Spencer since 2007, and absolutely loves the rolling hills that make up his small property. 

He became hooked on wine when he visited a vineyard in California's Napa Valley and saw his first "wine thief" -- a glass tube that was inserted into the barrel and dumped wine right into his wine glass.

"I didn't know you could do that," he said. "I was hooked."

George, 33, and his business partner, Karen Douglas, envisioned Vu ja de (a play on "déjà vu") to be a vineyard with "wine like you've never tasted before."

Their motto, "Passion, Love & Harmony," represents their passion for wine and life; their love of God, family and friends; and the harmonic bond that makes them successful.

"We want this to be a small, high-end boutique little cult winery," George said.

While Douglas is stationed in California and does all of the company's marketing, George is getting his hands dirty tending the vines. He has occasional help from college students who want to learn more about organic farming, but on a day-to-day basis, it's a one-man show.

"It's a lot of 14-hour days sometimes, but it's kind of a dream. I hope that it keeps progressing and the success keeps up. That is what I want," he said.

A native of Iowa and a longtime California resident, George had never set foot in West Virginia before he started looking at the farm on Reedyville Road. But after a few years in California, he decided he was tired of the "rat race" and wanted a more simple type of life.

"If guys like Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash are singing about this place, it can't be that bad," he said with a smile. "I just came out here and fell in love with this property."

Grapes, vines and wine

All of the farming and cultivation at Vu ja de is sustainable agriculture, an approach that helps maintain the natural ecosystem on the small farm.

"We do the type of farming other places only say they do," George said. "We really do take pride in every bottle."

In addition to avoiding harsh chemicals and sticking to organic-only farming, he believes in biodiversity within his vineyard.

"We let more grasses grow up and wild flowers that bring in more bugs and beneficial insects," he said. He even has future plans to plant blueberry and blackberry bushes between the vines along with dwarf apple trees on the vineyards four corners.

The vineyard boasts five French-hybrid vine varieties, including red Noiret, Frontenaq and Marquette and whites Traminette and Cayuga White.

Although the vineyard has been in business for almost three years -- and George has been blending wines on his property all that time -- the first crop was harvested in Spencer this season, yielding enough for 30 bottles of wine.

"The main reason why you don't get a crop the first few years is you have to cut off the little grapes ... but you want all of that energy to go to the roots," he said.

In the fourth year, the grapes will be grown on the top row of the trellises, as far away from the ground as possible.

"The reason why we put them up so high is you want to keep them off the ground and away from all the moisture because our problem out here ... is mold and mildew from too much humidity," he said.

George said it's not hard to train the vines to grow where you want them.

"In the springtime, they grow like crazy. They grow [to the top trellises] sometimes in a year, and then you just cut them back the second and third year and then after that you're pretty much good to go."

But before those grapes were ready to harvest, George was blending and fermenting other grapes in his garage-turned-tasting room and wine cellar.

George, who gets his grapes and juices from as far away as Australia, Germany and California, said making wine is like being a chef.

"When you've got five different chefs and they've all got the same filet mignon from the same cow, they'll all make it differently," he said.

"Toasting" the wine

Although nourishing the vines and growing the grapes is an important part of the process, the real art in winemaking is in the fermentation process.

George uses different types of French oak barrels to "toast" the wine.

"Think of it as basically putting toast in a toaster and how much you want to burn it," he says of putting the wine in a heavy or medium toast barrel.

It's not uncommon to keep a reserve from a barrel that had the perfect fit, or blend two to get a tastier variety.

George tries not the filter the wines at all and instead, lets them sit and settle.

In order to bring out more flavors and consistency, he traditionally stirs the sediment back in to the white wine for a least a month.

"It's not going to be your fresh, fruity, clean, crisp Pinot Grigio's," he said. But it does yield the bold taste he goes for.

One of the new wines George just bottled, Midnight Roots, is a syrah, zinfandel blend he calls "spicy and defiant" and gives it an R-rating, proof that he prides himself on producing "sexy, full-bodied wines."

George does hope for minor expansion one day, including a second tasting room on top of the hill over looking the vineyard and possibly log cabins on the property that people can rent out.

And although he wants to stay small and local, he also hopes to turn West Virginia into a wine tour state, like North Carolina or Virginia.

"I'm hoping the West Virginia Department of [Alcohol and Beverage Control Administration] can start help push some of this stuff along and do more wine trails and bring in tourism and jobs, because no matter what the economy is doing, people are going to drink if they want to drink."

For more information, please visit www.vujadewine.com.

Reach Kathryn Gregory at kathr...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5119.