Thursday, Jun. 04, 2009
How Sweet It is
A Homegrown Libation has Captured the Nation
Americans consumed about 2.5 billion gallons of tea in 2007.
Roughly 85 percent of that was iced, according to The Tea Association of the USA.
How much of that was consumed in South Carolina? The experts don’t say, but one thing is clear.
The Palmetto State knows sweet iced tea well enough to be home to one of the most popular innovations in either tea or liquor.
Make that an innovation in tea and liquor.
Without being overly sweet, a South Carolina distillery near Charleston has managed to take two long-standing institutions, tea and vodka, and make them into something beautiful enough to become distributed in all 50 states within a year’s time.
So, as we enter the first week of June, also known as National Iced Tea Month 2009, Firefly Distillery in Wadmalaw Island has some iced tea for you: the 70-proof variety known as Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, accompanied by four new flavored tea vodkas that have only been on the shelves for about two months now: peach, raspberry, mint, and lemon.
All but one of those flavors won admirers at the 2009 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, held in March:
• Firefly Mint Tea Flavored Vodka won a Double Gold Medal
• Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka won a Silver Medal
• Firefly Peach Tea Flavored Vodka won a Silver Medal
• Firefly Lemon Tea Flavored Vodka won a Bronze Medal
• Although not a tea-flavored vodka, it’s worth noting that Firefly Handcrafted Vodka won a Bronze Medal
Brent Butler of Myrtle Beach had tried Firefly’s acclaimed signature vodka, which is infused with a touch of muscadine wine, and she had also enjoyed Firefly’s second-born offering, Sweet Tea Vodka, at an area Bonefish Grill.
Then, she received a flavored Firefly sweet tea. Butler had announced via Twitter, “Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka with the peach flavoring is sooooo good!”
She later told me the story behind the Tweet. “For my birthday two weeks ago, my boss gave me a bottle of the peach [Firefly tea vodka],” she said, and she loved it.
“It doesn’t have a heavy sweet-tea flavor,” she said. A typical recipe for her involves a shot-and-a-half of Firefly sweet tea vodka with tonic water.
Danny Callahan, a server at Aspen Grille in Myrtle Beach, said his girlfriend loves Firefly’s raspberry tea, and he has some patrons who order three or four Firefly Sweet Tea vodka cocktails throughout a dinner.
“It’s a fun drink to sell,” Callahan said, going on to say that Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka is a good suggestion for those who want a summer-time drink.
SUCCESSFUL VODKA
Firefly started out with a signature vodka mellowed by an infusion of muscadine wine grown at the Irvin House Vineyard on Wadmalaw Island. The infusion is enough to be noticed, but not enough to alter vodka’s typical 80-proof rating.
The brand grew rapidly enough to allow the company to branch out into a new idea: sweet-tea flavored vodka. The company used tea from Charleston Tea Plantation, best-known as America’s only tea plantation, located only five miles down the road from Firefly Distillery. To sweeten it, Firefly chose cane sugar from Louisiana.
Firefly’s sweet tea vodka took off, and it’s now available in all 50 states.
“And we had a Canadian order, so we’re considered international,” Jay MacMurphy, a Firefly production manager and distilling apprentice, said with a laugh.
The tea has become so popular, Firefly can’t do all the distilling at its Wadmalaw Island site. The company had to send some to the Buffalo Trace bourbon distillery in Frankfurt, Ky. – still made with the muscadine wine of Wadmalaw Island. MacMurphy said most of the Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka available in the Southeast was produced on Wadmalaw, while most of the bottles in Western states probably come out of Kentucky.
“We don't have the capacity to distill everything here, but we hope to move everything back eventually,” MacMurphy said.
Perhaps the biggest expression of a successful vodka distillery is its ability to branch out, beyond vodka. Firefly has started Sea Island Rum Co., and will soon release two rums: Java Rum and Spirit Rum, both made with sugar cane grown on Wadmalaw Island and Johns Island, and aged in Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels.
COMPETITION HEATS UP
While Firefly was the first to arrive on the market with a sweet-tea flavored vodka, and while
muscadine’s mellowing edge helped the brand continue to dominate the market, the South Carolina company had its competitors.
Soon after Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka hit the shelves in April 2008, Sweet Carolina sweet-tea flavored vodka, from Maine, followed. Then Burnett’s vodka launched a sweet-tea vodka, and others.
Last February, Jeremiah Weed Sweet Tea Vodka, based in Connecticut, stormed the market, backed by international liquor giant Diageo, parent company of Smirnoff, Johnny Walker, Captain Morgan, Cuervo, and many others.
Dana McManus, a bartender at Key West Grill at Broadway at the Beach, said her restaurant decided to switch from Firefly to Jeremiah Weed.
“I have to tell you, I prefer Jeremiah Weed,” she said of the brand’s sweet tea vodka. Key West employees did a taste test, McManus said, and decided that Firefly was selling due to its name recognition, but Jeremiah Weed tasted good and was less expensive – at least from the restaurant’s distributer.
“I do love Firefly,” McManus said. “I drink it at home.” She also recently tried Firefly’s raspberry, and likes it mixed with lemonade. As a testament to Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka’s wildfire popularity, McManus thought the sweet-tea vodka came first, followed by Firefly’s signature muscadine-infused vodka, which actually hit the market first. The sweet-tea version has superseded its daddy.
Some sweet-tea vodka aficionados, like Butler and McManus, have not tried Sweet Carolina tea vodka, made in the state of Maine (of all places), but their reactions, offered in separate interviews, were similar.
McManus: “What do Mainers know about sweet tea?”
Butler: “That just doesn’t sound right. It’s like going to New York and ordering grits.”
As for Burnett’s sweet tea vodka, Butler tried it and said she didn’t like it at all.
MacMurphy chalks Firefly’s success to locally-grown tea and the vodka's four trips through the distillation process.
TEAS AND RECIPES
Legend has it that iced tea was born at the Louisiana State Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Mo., according to information published on the Web by the Tea Council and the Food and Drug Administration. The year was 1904, and the weather turned out to be way too hot for expo-goers to consider stopping at the Far East Tea House. So the tea house staffers decided to pour hot tea over ice cubes, and the drink became one of the most popular at the expo.
So it’s a natural progression for Southerners to move toward a more potent iced beverage.
When Bryan Watts of Charlotte, N.C., tailgates at his alma mater Wake Forest University’s football games, the beverage of choice is a Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka-lemonade mix. “It became our official tailgating drink in honor of Arnold Palmer, who attended Wake, and has the sweet tea/lemonade mix named after him,” Watts said via Facebook. He discovered Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka while visiting Charleston, and once, before it was available in North Carolina, had a friend drive south of the border to pick some up.
Some people, like McManus, call that Firefly tea-and-lemonade beverage the John Daly, named after the golfer who has made plenty of headlines for his drinking habits.
Butler prefers a shot-and-a-half with tonic water, while Firefly’s MacMurphy takes his award-winning mint tea vodka over the rocks, no splash of water necessary.
No matter what the recipe, if Butler’s tastes and Callahan’s experience serving at Aspen Grille are any indication, coastal South Carolina restaurants and bars ought to be serving this acclaimed, homegrown refreshment.
Contact Colin Burch at mail to: beerpour@yahoo.com or visit his blog at http://maltyhops.blogspot.com.
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