Becky Harris, the head distiller of Purcellville, Virginia's Catoctin Creek Distilling Company, and her husband, Scott, who co-founded the distillery.
DJ Glisson II, Firefly ImageworksBecky Harris, the head distiller of Purcellville, Virginia’s Catoctin Creek Distilling Company, was elected president of the board of directors for the American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA) in May. Diving into a leadership position amid a pandemic andand a social justice awakening, wasn’t quite what she envisioned.
“It’s not at all what I was thinking it was going to be—they asked me to run back in December of last year,” Harris says. “But I think we have a really good role to play to help all these small distilleries in the industry and to make progress while we can.”
Harris co-founded Catoctin Creek with her husband, Scott, and over the past decade has overseen the growth of the company from upstart to becoming nationally recognized. In 2017, spirits and wine conglomerate Constellation Brands made a minority acquisition into the distillery, a testament to the quality and consistency of the distillery’s products, as well as a signal of future growth to come. This spring, Catoctin Creek was among an early wave of distilleries that pivoted to hand sanitizer production, ultimately providing over 2,000 gallons of hand sanitizer while also donating over $12,000 to relief funds.
As a female distiller with a background in chemical engineering, Harris has fought for inclusion and diversity in the field. Now, she’s in a position where she can make an even larger and more direct impact.
Harris, 53, spoke with Penta about the current challenges distilleries are facing, solutions for their survival, and working toward a more inclusive industry.
PENTA: Given the challenges distilleries across the country are dealing with as a result of the pandemic, what type of legislation do distillers, as small businesses, need to survive?
Becky Harris: It’s going to be a real challenge. First of all, we should start with FET [Federal Excise Tax]. We have a bill that is going to expire with this Congress while I think we have over 300 co-sponsors for it. That is basically making the FET reduction that we got extended last year permanent. They only extended it for one year, so one of our big legislative issues this year has been, how do we keep this in place indefinitely? It’s just ridiculous that with so much support we can’ get a vote.
Second, and this is a new one—it came about as a surprise due to Covid—is direct-to-consumer shipping. It’s been something that I think a lot of distilleries have dreamed of for a long time, but nobody really felt that there was any kind of mood, if you will, in most of the state legislatures to consider this. But that’s changed. Especially as so many of these small businesses are moving to curbside pickup, and that’s OK for some of our people when you have a distillery that’s more urban, but we’re barely rural! Delivery and curbside pickup don’t get near the level of reaching our customers.
For years I think it’s been pretty common knowledge that the way things work in this industry, is not necessarily a modern way. I can’t tell you how many times I've had people come to the distillery and they’re from out of town and they don't want to pack a bottle in their suitcase—god knows I’ve been someplace and not wanted to pack a bottle in my suitcase—and you can’t ship.
What a disadvantage compared to the wine industry.
Exactly! Especially when you look at so many of these small wineries where most of their business is made up of these wine clubs or something, where they have this relationship with their customers that they can carry on from across the country. We in Virginia were actually just granted the privilege right away in the beginning of April, and initially it was like this shot of adrenaline. You’re looking at a market where 70% of our on premise business in the state of Virginia is gone right now. So what this does is help us to kind of make up for that. At least for right now.
One of your stated goals is a more inclusive industry. How specifically do you plan to foster more inclusion?
Definitely, that’s been on our minds. One of the things we did back at our board retreat [last] December was work on our strategic plan for how we need to grow. And Chris Montana [the previous president of the ACSA and co-owner of Du Nord Craft Spirits] brought to the table the question of, ‘Why am I the only black guy?’ It was a question that needed to be asked and obviously as things have played out this year, including the death of George Floyd, everyone sees it, too. I’ve been in this industry 10 years and I remember when there were less than a dozen female head distillers. I could list them on my fingers. And that’s been getting better, but the rest of our diversity isn’t really there yet.
We have a program we’re launching that’s going to help with creating the next group of entrepreneurial spirits professionals who can come in with the right knowledge to be the kind of employee distilleries want to have, or, get the tools they need to start their own company. So we’re in the process of starting a nonprofit foundation so we can do fundraising for that.
What we felt there was a need for was something to focus not only on distilling but also the kinds of skills that people need in smaller companies. Most of our members are small distilleries. So what do you need there? It’s a little different. And we wanted to address that. And underrepresented groups aren’t homogeneous. Some might come out of college, some don’t. Some might come from food and beverage. We wanted to create something for people coming from nontraditional backgrounds who want to put their hands to this, and we want to give them the tools they need to accelerate. It’s been very interesting, and it’s been a challenge.
When you started the distillery, did you get a lot of surprised reactions from people thinking Scott was the distiller and you were, oh, I don’t know, marketing or front of the house?
(Laughs.) Yes, all the time. It was one of things where you always have to prove yourself. I think there’s maybe a bit less of that now. And I have to say that people like Maggie and Nicole Austin [of Cascade Hollow Distilling, producers of George Dickel Tennessee Whisky] and Mel Heim out of Portland, all of those people that started way back and I remember reading about them and thinking, wow, I would love to meet them at some point! And it took a long time to get there but I think that’s the whole point. That makes people want to try it. Because they see that there are people like themselves already doing it.
Tell me a little bit about your professional path and how you got involved in craft spirits.
I’m a chemical engineer, and I worked for a number of different companies. My first job coming out of school [was] making contact lenses. When Scott came to me with the idea to do this, it was never a question of ‘can I do this?’—I mean making contact lenses is really freaking hard, I’m sure I can learn what I need to learn to do this. The question was can we make money doing this? And that’s still the question 10 years in! (Laughs) Which tells you how hard the whiskey business is.
How can people help their local distilleries amid the pandemic?
I just want people out there, if you have a local distillery, a local restaurant, a local bar—they’re going to be really struggling because just justifying their existence is becoming more and more difficult, you know—we want them all to survive this. I think we were in this golden age of restaurants and all of the sudden it all feels so tenuous. For me, it’s about making people conscious if you don’t just want large chain restaurants in your hometown, you need to help the independent ones who are there, stay there. And the same goes for your small, local distilleries.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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20 Minutes With: Becky Harris, American Craft Spirits Association President - Barron's
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