Hilton Head Distillery marks 10 years

Hilton Head Distillery is celebrating a decade on the island with new recipes, industry awards and plans to put a greater emphasis on aged rum and community partnerships.

The distillery will mark its 10th anniversary Sept. 24 with a ribbon cutting at 5 p.m., followed by a public celebration beginning at 5:30 p.m. The event will feature cocktails, live music from Groove Town Assault, tours and a special anniversary release.

For master distiller Cody Chinn, who joined Hilton Head Distillery last year, the anniversary comes as the business enters what he sees as a new era.

“We definitely have a product that tastes all new,” Chinn said. “We have a different strategy. We feel like we’re a brand-new brand.”

The distillery opened in 2016 on Cardinal Road in a building that previously housed a gymnastics facility. Today, tours take visitors behind the scenes to see the rum-making process, from fermentation and distillation to barrel aging and bottling.

In addition to its production operation, Hilton Head Distillery has a rum bar and retail shop where visitors can sample spirits neat, order flights or cocktails and purchase bottles and cocktail ingredients to take home.

The process begins with molasses sourced from sugar cane grown in South Carolina and Georgia and refined near Savannah, Chinn said. The molasses is combined with water and yeast and fermented for about three days before undergoing multiple stages of distillation.

Since taking over as master distiller, Chinn has changed the distillery’s molasses supplier, tightened fermentation controls and eliminated artificial flavorings and bulk-purchased rum from products carrying the Hilton Head Distillery label.

He said he also looked to the distillery’s original recipes while developing the current lineup.

“A lot of my inspiration for the recipe redesign was to go back to the original recipes,” Chinn said, adding that he wanted to return to “the roots that put us on the map” while adding his own approach.

The changes are beginning to receive recognition.

The distillery’s Extra Special Dark rum received a gold medal at the Bartender Spirits Awards, while other products also earned medals. Chinn said competitions can vary widely in the spirits industry, making it important to him to enter competitions he believes evaluate products on their merits.

The awards have not stopped him from tinkering.

When the distillery’s Bananas Foster rum received a bronze medal, Chinn saw an opportunity to improve it. He revised the recipe, adding elements inspired by traditional tableside Bananas Foster.

“I know that we got a bronze, and I’m super happy about it, but I think what I just made might definitely be silver, maybe even gold,” he said.

The next decade could bring a shift toward more limited releases and aged rum.

Chinn is experimenting with new oak barrels and plans to make the distillery’s Solera aging system the foundation for an annual vintage release.

Under that system, aged rum is drawn from the oldest row of barrels, which is then replenished with rum from progressively younger barrels.

The anniversary celebration will also offer a taste of the distillery’s past. Among the remaining barrels from its former sister operation, Dark Corner Distillery in Greenville, are single malt whiskeys aged 10 to 11 years. One will be tapped for a special release during the celebration.

Hilton Head Distillery is also looking outside its walls for its next chapter.

Through an initiative called Spirits for a Cause, the distillery plans to partner with local nonprofit organizations and direct a portion of sales from designated bottles to those groups.

Its first collaborations include Pockets Full of Sunshine, a local nonprofit serving adults with intellectual disabilities. The distillery is bringing back Toasted Cookie, a discontinued product, as part of that partnership, with a release planned for September.

Another collaboration is being developed with the local Gullah community, with a release planned for February. The partnership is intended to help preserve their historical South Carolina traditions and strengthen Gullah cultural heritage.

As Hilton Head Distillery enters its second decade, that local identity is also shaping what Chinn wants to put in the bottle. Alongside its core lineup, he envisions more limited products that visitors cannot find elsewhere.

For those who have never visited, or haven’t been back in a while, Chinn sees the anniversary as an invitation.

“If you’ve never seen us before, it’s a great time to come,” he said. “But also people that have been here in the past and liked us, we think we’re better now. And it’s time to come back.”

For more information about Hilton Head Distillery’s 10th anniversary celebration, tours, tastings and other events, visit hiltonheaddistillery.com.