Firefly Distillery, founded in 2005 by Scott Newitt and Jim Irvin, has been known for years
for its flavored vodkas and moonshine. Recently, though, the distillery expanded to include Tom & Huck Distillers, a collection of aged and distilled spirits.
The Tom & Huck team is composed of Irvin, his stepson Jay Macmurphy and granddaughter Riley Macmurphy. At just 22, Riley is head blender for Tom & Huck, standing out as a young woman in an often male-dominated industry.
Macmurphy said she doesn’t know a life without distilling.
“I was always around,” she said of growing up in the extended Firefly family. The distillery’s former location on Wadmalaw Island, shared with Deep Water Vineyard, was the ideal spot for a kid. When Firefly moved its headquarters to North Charleston in 2020, though, Macmurphy said she wasn’t as involved.
“It was my parents’ job, you know? It wasn’t something I was into as a high schooler,” she said. Things changed last year when Macmurphy came in to help out with production one day. “I was there for probably three days and I instantly was like, ‘This is the best place to work.’ … It was all very fascinating to me.”
Macmurphy said her parents were surprised, but pleased, when she told them she wanted to pursue a life in the spirits industry.
“I want to be my own person and I wanted to find something I was passionate about,” she said. “And I’m just very lucky that this happened to be the thing that I was.”
Rockin’ in the rickhouse
Tom & Huck’s spirits are, as a description claims, “distinguished by the coastal location and maritime climate of the Lowcountry.”
That’s a nice way of saying that the rickhouse, where the spirits age is really, really hot. “It’s actually wild in there,” laughed Macmurphy, who spends plenty of time in the barrel aging facility.
Bourbon is aged in oak barrels that don’t let liquid seep out — but they’re not airtight. This allows barrels to be susceptible to temperature and humidity changes, something they experience a lot of in Charleston’s hot and humid climate.
And Macmurphy will tell you that the distilling process isn’t as simple as most folks, her previous self included, assume.
“I always thought that it was following a formula,” she said of the distilling process. “But it’s much more of an art and craft. Every single distillation batch is different from the last one and it is all based on the person who’s distilling it.”
The people who are distilling liquor at Firefly and Tom & Huck are, at various points in time, mostly women. Last year, Firefly boasted an all-female production team. While some of those positions are now filled by men, the company is always working to place an emphasis on gender equality in distilling.
“As someone who’s watched the distillery industry evolve over the years, it’s inspiring to see how a once male-dominated field now actively embraces diverse talents, particularly women,” said Ann Irvin, wife of co-founder Jim Irvin.
“At Firefly, this progress has strengthened our dedication to both innovation and tradition, empowering each generation to leave their unique mark while honoring the craftsmanship that laid our foundation.”
And while women own less than 8% of the 2,235 craft distilleries in the U.S. (as of 2022), according to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, the number of women working in the industry continues to grow.
“I think that there’s definitely more women in general [in the distilling industry] and I see it growing all the time,” Macmurphy said, adding that working on the all-female production team at Firefly felt like being a part of history. “The two blenders before me were also women, and I feel like I’m just carrying the torch. … I love it.”
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