Mary Ann Hardman and her husband, pathologist William Hardman, bought land in the Persimmon Valley in northeast Georgia to start a vineyard in 2000.

Two years later, they had their first offering of white wine. A year after that, the first of the red was ready.

Production at the 110-acre Persimmon Creek Vineyards has steadily increased, but by global standards, it is still a tiny operation: 250 cases of Cabernet Franc, 400 cases of Sayval, 300 cases of Merlot and 200 cases of Riesling, plus 47 cases of an ice wine made with the Riesling.

Hardman's job is to find retail stores and restaurants to carry Persimmon Creek's offerings.

A bottle of the wine sells in the mid-$20 range retail. The ice wine is nearly four times that.

"We've been selling out every year," said Hardman, who grew up in Macon and graduated from Presbyterian College in South Carolina.

In Atlanta, Persimmon is served in a number of restaurants, including the Woodfire Grill, Bacchanalia and the Ritz-Carlton.

Q: What kind of respect does Persimmon Creek get being a Georgia wine?

A: People in Napa are curious about us. I have correspondence with people in London. We hear from people around the globe. Yet I have people here, in my own circle, who won't return my phone call.

The first sales call I made . . . their wine dude was very nice, but he refused to taste it. Why? Because it was from Georgia. I said, 'Just smell it.' And he smelled it. And then I said, 'Come on, taste it.' And he did and he liked it. He didn't buy anything that time, but three or four months later, he ordered some.

It's a tremendous effort to get them to understand. So they'd know we weren't just some bootleggers out there.

Q: You talk a lot about the wine's local appeal.

A: You see a Georgia blue crab, and it's served with a Loire or with a Sauvignon. But why not have it all be Georgia? I believe that what grows together, goes together.

Q: How do you market the wine?

A: When I go into restaurants to do a presentation, I do a vineyard show and tell. I take grapes. I take dirt in a couple of Ziploc bags.

Q: How did you price the wine?

A: We started at $12 to $15 a bottle. You can't start at a Neiman-Marcus price when you are just beginning. I would love for this wine to sell at $50 a bottle, but how many would sell? Not many. We want this wine to sell. At $25 a bottle, there's a respect for it. It's not Two Buck Chuck.

Q: Is there a special approach to wine-making that is unique?

A: You see a bottle. I see a vineyard. You taste the wine. I taste the soil and the ground and the place. I don't want to put anybody out, but I think a squash is just a squash. When you have a squash, you don't have the taste of this place or that place. But if you have a Riesling from Washington, it tastes different from our Riesling.

Q: What makes this place different?

A: Look at those trees. Look at all those shades of green. You'd have to be an artist to get all of them. I'm not saying there's God here or there's Jesus. But there is peace here. We hike through these woods. The [national] forestry lands start back there somewhere, and you can see the postings on the trees. Are there trails? Well, no. But the best paths are the unmarked ones.

Q: But is there any history of wine here?

A: During Prohibition, this was a hotbed of white liquor. Rabun County was really poor. How did they make a living? By bootlegging. You can just walk back into the woods and see old stills. Persimmon was known for having some of the best white lightning in Georgia.

Q: What connects you to wine?

A: When I was 19, my mother walked into my room when I was studying and said my father [had] died. A week later I was back in school, and I finished that semester with a 4.0 because that is what my father would have wanted. People are like the grape vines. If they have stress, they grow deeper and stronger. You develop character by being stressed.

THE MARY ANN HARDMAN FILE

> Family: Husband, William J. Hardman III, Mitchell, 14, "the Twin Torpedoes," Brigham and Hamilton, 9.

> Favorite wine: Seyval Blanc from Persimmon Creek.

> Wine of aspiration: "Like Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, Chateau d'Yquem is iconoclastic and graceful."

> Current music: "The Orchard" by Lizz Wright (of Hahira). "No Promises" by Carla Bruni.

> Favorite vacation spot: Costa Rica

> Perfect meal: "I would love, love to be in Abbeville, Georgia, at my grandmother's red-checked table-clothed table eating her macaroni and cheese. Love and true hospitality."

> Best book I read this year: "A tie between 'Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers' by Joseph Mills and 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran."

> Best wine book: "Adventure on the Wine Route" by Kermit Lynch. "Part travelogue, part wine column, part character sketches —- it is a wonderful literary work."

> Writer you'd want to have dinner with: Edgar Allan Poe. "He'd be a good dinner partner on a dark and gloomy night, in a spider web-laced grotto with broken windows."