Episode 25, Talking South Carolina Podcast Interview with Special Guests, Craig & Meredith Amick, founders of Hollow Creek Distillery, Leesville, SC.

Episode transcript:

Craig Amick – Thanks for coming out.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I, I, you know, I’ve heard a lot about it, especially from a neighbor of mine, but, hadn’t had the chance to get out here, and this is pretty neat. I love this building. This is beautiful.”

Meritdeth Amick – Thank you.

Angela Barrett – How long have you guys been open?

Craig Amick – “So we’ve been open about eight and a half years now. Oh, wow. We actually started the project probably three years before that. A lot of research. And then we had a couple of years of, construction and licensing to, and then we opened up the summer 26th of 2014.”

Angela Barrett – “Nice. So Hollow Creek distillery. Yeah, that. Well, we say, as I say. All right. So tell me what that is in. Essence. What what what are we doing here?”

Craig Amick – “So we are basically all things distilled spirits. We’ve got a pretty broad product portfolio right now. We started out with moonshine, actually, on day one, it was just clear moonshine. And then over the next little while, we added different flavors. To make moonshine a little more approachable. And everybody likes flavor.”

Angela Barrett – So Sea Salt caramel is my favorite.

Craig Amick – “And that’s a very popular one. And then we added other products as we went. So now we’re up to, essentially for distributed products, we have two, two brands of bourbon, one called William Allen and one called High Cotton. And we have a vodka that’s called Low water. And we have a cinnamon whiskey called White Hot.”

Angela Barrett – “And, I see the. Medals. So. But y’all won two awards. And just recently, I know won with the state and one with the free times. I guess about the best. But what are these medals?”

Craig Amick – “So these medals are a few competitions we entered last year in 2022. We’ve never really done spirits competitions before. So we decided last year that they we’ll kind of throw our hat in the ring too, and just see how we stack up, because, you know, all the other really big distilleries and these things, so we entered three.”

Craig Amick – “It was the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition, San Francisco World Spirits Fair, and New York International Spirits Competition. And honestly, I thought we’re going to enter, you know, about 3 or 4 products in each of these. And if we win one medal somewhere, I’m going to be thrilled. So we surprised everybody ourselves, probably more than anybody else.”

Craig Amick – “And I think we ended up winning 14 medals. Wow. We won, several gold medals and actually a double gold medal at New York International.”

Angela Barrett – Wow.

Meritdeth Amick – And that double gold means that it was a unanimous gold by all the judges.

Angela Barrett – “Oh, wow. And so and all that was last year. Yes, yes. Wow. Congratulations. That’s that’s impressive. Now the, like I said, the state and the free times, I mean, those are just where people pick the best. And you won that last year.”

Craig Amick – “Yeah. So we’ve won both of those the last 3 or 4 years running. We’ll see how this year turns out. Voting still open. It’s, you know, certainly nice to win local awards.”

Angela Barrett – “Sure, sure, sure. That’s what that’s what people who are buying it. That’s right, that’s right. So, you said you do a bourbon and a vodka. And, what was the other.”

Craig Amick – Do we have a cinnamon whiskey?

Angela Barrett – Sandwich.

Craig Amick – And a second bourbon.

Angela Barrett – “Okay. And then you have all the moonshine stuff. Yes. Yes. Well, that’s cool. And how did y’all get started? I mean, what made you say, wake up one more. Good. Let’s let’s make whiskey.”

Craig Amick – “So there’s a little bit of a family or a little bit of a story to it. I had a really good family friend, who, if you think about your stereotypical moonshiner from the discovery TV channel, I mean, right.”

Angela Barrett – “In the woods, buried somewhere in.”

Craig Amick – “The woods, overalls, the whole deal. And he essentially made moonshine in this area. The majority of his life. He learned from his father, and they worked together for a while. So if you fast forward a lot, 2009, South Carolina passes a law that basically creates the, the, the permitting process, the structure for micro distilleries.”

Craig Amick – “And that’s the permit we, we operate on. There’s a micro distillery. Well, Lamar was the guy’s name. He read about it in the newspaper right after the law was passed. And Kevin said, that’s all I’ve really ever wanted to do. And there’s a little bit of a longer story to it, but essentially he and I talked about it a few times.”

Craig Amick – “I thought it was a really good idea. He kind of once owned. He had told him what a little bit said, well, maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. As a look, I want to build it so can you help us out? And that’s where it started. At that point, we were we weren’t really on the cutting edge of distilleries in South Carolina anymore.”

Craig Amick – “There were a few that had opened. A couple of them were struggling mightily already. So was it was very obvious that this is, you know, a hyper competitive business and it’s very easy to lose money in which I wasn’t interested in doing.”

Angela Barrett – Right.

Craig Amick – “So we did take about a year to figure out, you know, just how do we want to get into the business? And, you know, kind of what we thought was a decent plan to not lose money, that after we convinced ourselves that, yeah, we can actually make a go this it took us two years to, you know, find property that we liked and build a functional facility.”

Craig Amick – “That’s the other catch. You have to have a functional facility before you can get your permit. So, it was a long road, but.”

Angela Barrett – “So now is where we are now, which is right by the lake. Hollow Creek right here. This is, like you said, where you get the name from. Was this family land?”

Craig Amick – It was.

Angela Barrett – “Not. It was not. Okay, because there’s a story of somewhere I read, as before I got here about land that was passed down from King George or given back. So,”

Craig Amick – So you’re probably reading my family’s story.

Angela Barrett – Okay.

Craig Amick – “But we’ve been here forever, so I’m anemic. It’s a it’s a fairly big Lexington County name. I guess you would say.”

Angela Barrett – Yes.

Craig Amick – “We have a 12 year old son who is the 10th generation of my family right here. If you go all the way back, I think the story goes back to 1752. A guy by the name of Conrad Emig immigrated from Germany and settled in what was at the time, the Dutch Fork area of South Carolina. Oh, it was the area between the Little Saluda River and the Flint River.”

Craig Amick – “When he immigrated, it was himself, his wife and one young son. And at the time you could get a land grant for 50 acres per person. So, you know, my family essentially started out with 150 acre land grant between the Saluda and Little Flow rivers. And we’ve been here ever since. I mean, that land is now flooded, but we are only a few miles from it, so.”

Craig Amick – We don’t get out too much.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, too far. Right? Yeah. That’s funny. So you have to have this up and running before you get your permit. I think that’s where we were before I took a side sidebar. Right. Yeah, yeah. And you said that took about a year before you. Really?”

Craig Amick – “Well, it took us a couple of years. A couple years. We started out, you know, once we said, yes, we’re actually going to do this and think we have a pretty good plan. We started, you know, by looking for real estate. Yes. And this was family and it absolutely was not. So we looked around at what was available at the time and, you know, you get in the Lexington County zoning and everything else.”

Craig Amick – “And this one just kind of it fit very nicely. Yeah. What we wanted to do. So being in real estate, you know, it takes and this property was actually fairly challenging to buy. It had several interests that, had to be run down. It was, it was split three ways.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh, goodness.”

Craig Amick – “To the gentleman, I think it passed away. And it was it was tied up in a couple of estates. It was.”

Angela Barrett – Owned.

Craig Amick – “By this place. It took us a little time, but then after that, once we got it, it was, completely undeveloped, like we started.”

Angela Barrett – So none of this was here.

Craig Amick – None of this was here. It was wooded on a dirt road. We even got the luxury of paving the roads.

Angela Barrett – “Oh, that was a fun job. Now, where did y’all come up with your logo? The Hollow Creek.”

Meritdeth Amick – Creek distillery system.

Angela Barrett – Yeah.

Meritdeth Amick – “So we have a good friend. So we were high school sweethearts. Went to. We we went to Gilbert High School, and, we have a good friend who also went to Gilbert High School with us. And she went on to be an art teacher, actually, in Lexington one and, she helped us when we had this idea.”

Meritdeth Amick – “She helped us design, our Hollow Creek logo and really some of our first labels she helped design. So it’s been been great.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Now the one with the dog. What is that, one of your dogs?”

Craig Amick – “No, it is not, actually.”

Meritdeth Amick – “So that is that is Gus. So, we are there is Hollow Creek Kennels here. You’re aware we’re in the Hollow Creek area, right? We’re Hollow Creek empties into Lake Murray. And so, there’s Hollow Creek, distillery, Hall Creek, Christmas tree Farm, where you can buy your Christmas trees at, at the season. And then there’s Hollow Creek Kennels, and they race champion Boykins.”

Meritdeth Amick – “And so this is just a nod to us being in that area. And Gus was the granddaddy of the line of Hollow Creek Kennels and, so we decided also to honor our South Carolina heritage. Again, you can tell from my accent or from here. And so the Boykin Spaniel is the South Carolina State dog. So we decided to put that, on the label as well.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Beautiful. So, all of your labels have, different mean they’re all not the same. I mean, you wouldn’t even know unless you read it. I guess that they are for. Well, I guess it does. Some of the scrolling is the same. I was just trying to look at the labels and see, you know, what would say if I was just talking about, oh, I know where that came from, but I guess it would be some of that.”

Angela Barrett – Yeah. It’s neat.

Craig Amick – “Yeah. So the look and feel of some of the labels are the same. But they really are kind of standalone brands, that, you know, our moonshine is basically Hollow Creek moonshine, so it’s pretty well identified. But these four brands are essentially what we distribute, and really they’re standalone brands. Of course, if you look on the back, it’s going to say distilled and bottled by Holly Creek Distillery.”

Craig Amick – “And some of them have the same look and feel, especially the two Bourbons. Right. Kind of the, the, the.”

Angela Barrett – Beautiful.

Craig Amick – “Aged Louis look or something like that. But if you just walk into your local red dot store and see it and you’re not familiar with us, there’s nothing about it that screams, oh, Holly Creek Distillery made that I gotcha.”

Angela Barrett – “But they are beautiful. I mean, they really are. Now y’all do a couple of things here I know that you’ve got coming up a comedy night venue, which you’ve done before and, and you plan on continuing doing those.”

Meritdeth Amick – “Absolutely. So, we’ve got one coming up very soon and then we’ll continue those on in the future. They’ve been really well-attended. We bring a comedian in here and have food truck outside and open bar inside and, and just enjoy that time. And folks like to come in and and have a little relaxation and a couple of laughs.”

Meritdeth Amick – Yeah. I’m at home.

Angela Barrett – “And that’s probably great for this area. I mean, there’s not a lot in this direction. I know it’s coming. I mean, because in Lexington School.”

Craig Amick – “Everything’s kind of moving this way. But you’re right, there’s just not a lot. That’s right. Right now. So any chance that we can, we can take that kind of, you know, bring people together and have a good time. A night for laughs. Yeah. The first time we did, I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but it’s been fantastic.”

Craig Amick – “So, yeah, we’ll keep doing it.”

Angela Barrett – And we are open Thursday through Saturday.

Craig Amick – All right. So Thursday afternoon from 1 to 7 and then Friday and Saturday we’re open from 10 to 7.

Angela Barrett – And y’all have tastings at some point where people can come in and taste.

Craig Amick – “Yeah. Anytime we’re open, stop by. And we’ve got the tasting bar set up and you’re welcome to try anything you want.”

Angela Barrett – That could be dangerous.

Craig Amick – But we are limited with how.

Angela Barrett – “Much we get out here, right?”

Craig Amick – You can’t get over. It’s either. But you can.

Angela Barrett – “And so what, what other kind of things, do you guys do? You know, that bring in a, you know, like a group of people?”

Craig Amick – “So we we’ve done a few barrel releases for our bourbon. We’ve got, probably 3 or 4 more barrels that we’re going to release a single barrel. Yeah. This year, we actually did a couple of pretty cool things with the last barrel we released. We had, a barrel pick party, so we, you know, sold tickets, let people come in, and we had kind of pre-selected full barrels and we let everybody taste each of the four and then vote for which one.”

Craig Amick – “They wanted us to barrel our bottle. And then the following week, we invited people back out to come help bottle that barrel.”

Angela Barrett – “Oh, neat.”

Craig Amick – “So we had folks that, you know, attended both, and then they essentially get the opportunity to say, hey, I helped pick this barrel, and then I bottled these bottles. Yeah. So it gives you a little bit of the story to go along with your, your single barrel, barrel proof bourbon. So we’ll do that probably at least three more times this year.”

Craig Amick – “And then we’re also getting ready to kick off kind of a special release series. We’re going to, I think Family Reserve is what we’re going to call it. So we have, family reserve releases. They’ll be on some regular schedule. Right now we’re thinking monthly, but I wouldn’t shovel I installed.”

Angela Barrett – “Right, I get it, I get it now. I know y’all do something with people I saw on Facebook. I think you had something on people’s birthday.”

Meritdeth Amick – “We definitely celebrate birthdays here. So if you come in on a Saturday, in your birthday month, you get a free bottle of our low water vodka. So, we asked folks to come in and then take a picture with their bottle, share it on social media, and let their other friends know that they can come in and do the same thing.”

Meritdeth Amick – “So that’s been a really, really, really, you know, positive thing. People love it. People always talk about that. So and know we were talking about some of the events that we’ve done. We have also done, we’ve had bands, live bands come out, with food trucks and that kind of thing. And we will do that again as it gets cooler.”

Meritdeth Amick – “Nobody wants to sit outside when you’re, in the South Carolina summer, but we’ll do that again as well as we do free cocktail Saturdays. So one Saturday a month, if you happen to come in for your Saturday birthday bottle on the free cocktail Saturday, we do. We’ll hand out one of the biggest hills we had to climb on.”

Meritdeth Amick – “We just started with moonshine was how do you mix this stuff? What? How do you make a drink with it? And so we’ve just continued, you know, basically handing out a free cocktail, showing folks how to mix their drinks. And sometimes we do that with our moonshine, but then often will feature some of our Bourbons or vodka as well.”

Meritdeth Amick – “And so we again, those are all on the calendar as well. And give folks some drinks, ideas and things that they can make at home. I’m certainly not Martha Stewart. So I’m not making anything really either. I’m not making anything fancy, but we’re just trying to do something simple and something you can repeat at home and enjoy with friends.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a great idea. Now, as far as the recipes, like are there online anywhere, like.”

Meritdeth Amick – “So we do after the fact, we’ll share them on our social media. We have Facebook and Instagram. We do have a website and we do periodically post some recipes there, but the know majority of those are going to be on our social media platforms.”

Angela Barrett – “I gotcha, I gotcha, and like if people want to know if your day, you’re going to have a food truck or band. I mean, they just need to follow the page and, and make sure they’re they know when all that’s going to happen.”

Meritdeth Amick – “Absolutely. So on on Facebook and Instagram, we always post our events as well as our, our website does have a page separate for events. So you can click on there and kind of see what’s coming up. If you want to plan your your next, next couple of months that that’ll be on on the schedule. We always the one of our most popular cocktail Saturdays is we usually do it the Saturday before Christmas.”

Meritdeth Amick – “I think this year the Saturday before Christmas is the 23rd. So that’s a little close to Christmas. So I think we’ll do it the 16th this year. But we always, share a cup of hot chocolate. And so for, for the adults that are over age 21, they get to choose whatever spirit they want to spike their hot chocolate with.”

Meritdeth Amick – “And then for the kiddos, they get their their just plain hot chocolate. And then, we always have marshmallows and whipped cream and sprinkles and all the things that you might see on there. Yeah. And every now and then, Santa makes an appearance at this, hot chocolate. So shop and get it. So we’ll.”

Angela Barrett – Have.

Meritdeth Amick – “A, we’ll do a, a lot of times we’ll have a wide mobile out here as well. We often host a lot of mobile, so that folks, can come in from the community and donate blood and don’t have to go all the way to Lexington or Columbia to do that. So a lot of times they’re out here so that you can do your good deed right there around the holiday season, as well as come in and grab a cup of hot chocolate.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. Now y’all have some kind of frozen drink. According to my neighbor Bill. That he dearly loved. So what is that?”

Craig Amick – “So on Saturdays during the summer, we make slushies, basically. Okay, the flavors always change each week. It’s just a matter of, you know, kind of what we decide we want to make. And then we make two versions of each. We make a nonalcoholic one for anybody who is not interested in alcohol. Or anyone under 21.”

Craig Amick – And then we make the same slushies with vodka so you can come in and get a spiked slushie. Those are really popular getting. So.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, I should have asked you what his favorite one was, but, I failed to do that. But he, know for a fact is definitely in love with those.”

Meritdeth Amick – So the lemonade and the peach are very popular flavors of the slushies that we’ve done so far.

Angela Barrett – The peach does sound good.

Meritdeth Amick – It’s very tasty.

Angela Barrett – 4th of July weekend. Peach this Saturday.

Meritdeth Amick – “Peach. And that it will be a peach. We will, I think I and lemonade this Saturday. Not sure what the third color or third flavor will be this weekend, but both of I will be so. And you hear us talk about, you know, nonalcoholic slushies for the kids as well as the cup hot chocolate without alcohol for the kids.”

Meritdeth Amick – “We’re definitely family friendly and dog friendly and friendly and dog friendly. We have a, Our son is 12 now. He was three when when we opened the business, and he’s pretty much been raised here. A lot of times you’ll see him hanging out, in here. So definitely family friendly. And we actually just got a new dog within the last 2 or 3 months.”

Meritdeth Amick – And so you’ll see him out here a lot of times on Saturdays as well. So.

Angela Barrett – “Phenomenal. But I know there’s, my son for one. They’re always looking for somewhere that they can take the dog with them because they don’t necessarily want to leave him locked up on Saturday all day, you know, while they’re, you know, going out. So the dog friendly is a very important to a lot of people. What are your best selling products?”

Craig Amick – “So if you want to talk about moonshine flavors, certainly the Sea salt caramel is the best seller.”

Angela Barrett – “If you haven’t had it, you need to try it.”

Craig Amick – “And then as far as just overall highest volume, you’re probably looking at low water vodka. And honestly, our Bourbons are some of the most popular. Two the the problem is, you know, we’re a small distillery. We only have so much bourbon.”

Angela Barrett – Right.

Craig Amick – “So. And it takes years to make this stuff. You know, we’re we’re bottling bourbon. That’s around four and a half years. Getting close to five years old now. So it’s not something we can make quickly if we say, oh, we need more bourbon, we can make more bourbon. But it’s five years before, right?”

Angela Barrett – “We’re going to have to wait and patience. That’s right. Patience, patience. Now, I, I did read something that, you know, like with everybody in business, you’re always trying to think about what, you know, what can we do next? I something about Adopt the Barrel is that.”

Craig Amick – “Yes. So, we actually haven’t really announced anything with this yet. And but it’s certainly an idea that we’ve thrown around. We’ve kind of got it figured out now. So in the bourbon world, single barrels and private barrels are a really big thing, you know, Bourbon club come in. And we actually just had one in a week ago.”

Craig Amick – “They came in and sampled some barrels to figure out which barrel they want to buy. So it’ll end up being a barrel that we put an extra label on that says, you know, this barrel was picked by this club and, and here’s the barrel number, that kind of thing. The finished barrels of bourbon get fairly expensive, right?”

Craig Amick – “So what the thought is, is we will offer, you know, essentially different price points and at different price points, you get more control. So if you come in and say, I want to pick a barrel and turn around, have you bottle it pretty quickly, then, you know, we’re looking at four and five year old barrels. And we’re going to turn around and bottle it and it’s going to be a fairly high price.”

Craig Amick – “If you get a younger barrel, then we don’t have to charge quite as high a price for it. But we also can’t bottle it. Yeah. So, you know, the example would be you come in and we’ll let you sample like some two year old barrels. All right. Well all of our labels say straight bourbon whiskey and they don’t have an age statement on them.”

Craig Amick – “So we cannot put that label on two year old bourbon. It’s got to be at least four. So you get a different price point. A lower price point. Because it’s two years old, you have to wait a couple of years before we can barrel it. The other thing for you, though, is you get to pick when it gets barreled.”

Craig Amick – “So if you like it at four years old, great. If you want to let it get 5 or 6, we’ll let it sit on our bourbon stack. And, you know, you can come in and try it from time to time whenever you say, yep, I’m ready for you to bottle it, will bottle it for you. So that’s going to be our barrel adoption program.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. It sounded a little bit, you know, was able to read it sounded pretty good. What a pretty great idea. Especially for, like you said, people, you’ve got bourbon clubs. I know there’s one in our neighborhood. I think they meet on Wednesday night. Okay, but they really like bourbon. So. Yeah, I mean, for those kind of people that I see them getting pretty excited about, I’ve tried it.”

Angela Barrett – “And no offense to bourbon makers, I just haven’t I haven’t found a way to like it. Maybe it’s yours. I have, I haven’t tasted it, but, Yeah, but, like, I was going to ask, can we go see, where you guys make this stuff?”

Craig Amick – Absolutely.

Angela Barrett – “All right, so, guys, that was pretty neat again. It looks like something out of, you know, a movie, a spaceship or something, but that’s that’s pretty cool by then. And it’s nice and shiny to, Now is there? It wasn’t air conditioned, but is it? It wasn’t terribly hot in there. I mean, I know it’s a big building, but.”

Angela Barrett – “So you’re not supposed to air conditioned because of the barrels, or is that you just chose. Haven’t chosen to.”

Craig Amick – “Well, a couple of different things. Number one, we haven’t chosen to, you know, is the building. It’s a big building in. It’s a production building. So, you know, it’s, not really need it. The other thing is that we do have some barrels in there aging and actually temperature fluctuation is really good for those. So as it gets hot, the bourbon absorbs into the barrel more and as it gets cold kind of gets pushed back out of the wood.”

Craig Amick – “And that honestly is what helps aging bourbon. So temperature fluctuations is a good thing. We want it hot in the summer and cold in the winter, which makes it a little bit inconvenient for tours. But people don’t seem to mind too much. Really. Not that hot over there.”

Angela Barrett – “And speaking of tours, do you give tours? I mean, do you have towns again? Maybe on your events calendars? Or is that something you do?”

Craig Amick – “Yes, we do give tours anytime we’re open.”

Angela Barrett – Okay.

Craig Amick – “Thursday afternoon, Friday, Saturday, Saturdays. Sometimes you get a little busy and and we’ll kind of limit it. We’ve got a few places out there that tours are 11 one, three and five.”

Angela Barrett – Okay.

Craig Amick – “But if we can accommodate outside of those times, we always will. Sure. But if we’ve got a packed house and, you know, only 4 or 5 people work in that day. Yeah, maybe 11 one, three and five.”

Angela Barrett – Yeah. Right. Yeah I gotcha we.

Meritdeth Amick – Usually we’ll do the tour first. So if it is a little warm we’ll bring folks back in here where the air conditioned is and serve them a couple of drinks and then they don’t mind any more.

Angela Barrett – “That’s right. And it wasn’t bad. I know it’s earlier in the day, but it wasn’t bad. At all. But, I know that a lot of the area, I guess that building is shaded, but, I’m sure that doesn’t help on it is really, really hot. Some are August days. But but thank you all so much for allowing me to be here today.”

Angela Barrett – “This is phenomenal. I mean, this is it is beautiful. And that was, like I said, very interesting. And, I appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for hanging out with us today. And we hope you enjoyed the show. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or have a person business idea, an event that Lexington needs to know more about, email me local at.”