The sweet stuff – Louisiana native talks about crafting popular liquors in South Carolina

Scott Newitt motions to the bartender to get me one, too.

He’s drinking what he has named a J Fly—two parts Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, one part Jameson Irish Whiskey and four parts lemonade. Pour over ice, and it’s hard to imagine a more refreshing late-summer cocktail.

“That’s unbelievable,” Newitt says as we clank glasses and each take a sip.

Sometimes this writing stuff really rocks, particularly today when I’m really glad I cleared my schedule for the rest of the afternoon. We’ve met at Hello Sushi near campus, a spot that will feature a concert tomorrow before an LSU game and a huge Firefly promotion.

Scott lines up a few jars of Firefly Moonshine on the bar. White Lightning. Peach. Cherry. And … “Do you like apple pie?” he asks.

Who doesn’t?

“Try some of this,” he says, as he slides over a sampling of Firefly Moonshine Apple Pie, 60.3 proof. One sip and you might declare, “Kids, don’t try this at home!” as it makes its way down.

Newitt, 48, grew up on Honey Island Swamp near Pearl River, La. He graduated from LSU in 1988 and went into banking in Atlanta. He met his wife there but quickly learned the banking business wasn’t for him.

He got into the wine business, working for Gallo, where he helped develop some brands, moved around a bit and gained valuable experience.

Ultimately, he ended up in Charleston, S.C., where he took over a wholesale wine and liquor business and boasts that he introduced Red Bull to South Carolina.

“And then I came up with the world’s first sweet tea vodka, because nobody was doing it,” he says.

The only tea plantation in North America, he explained, just happens to be on Wadmalaw Island, where the Firefly distillery is now. What’s more, while there are now more than 250 so-called vodka micro-distilleries in the country, there were only 20 in 2008 when Firefly started.

“I grew up in Louisiana, know about the sugar cane, and I looked at my partner (Jim Irvin) and told him, ‘We’ve got to make sweet tea vodka,'” he says. “I had been marketing brands for other people for 18 years and decided to make my own vodka. I really wanted to be the vodka of the southeast.”

A concept that seemed so totally rooted in the Deep South was embraced nationwide. Along the way there have been twists and turns as well as growth: since 2009, you can get Firefly in all 50 states. There are a handful of other vodka flavors in the brand, even a straight vodka, plus a line of rums and a line of liqueurs. They produce 200,000 cases of Sweet Tea Vodka a year and another 100,000 of the Moonshine.

The next frontier is whiskey and bourbon, where Firefly has tied in with the famous Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky.

“I want to concentrate on some really high-end stuff now,” Newitt says. “Because I can.”

The aforementioned Irvin, a chemist who went to Vanderbilt, is from Louisville. “He’s been making moonshine all of his life,” Newitt says with a laugh.

Laughing comes easy when you’re spending an afternoon drinking a J Fly. As we order sushi, I mention that it seems way better than working in that bank, and I ask if he ever pinches himself and thinks this is incredible.

“Every morning,” he says with a smile. “It’s amazing. It really is.” fireflyvodka.com