A vodka made on Wadmalaw Island is about to be poured across the country.

This week, Buffalo Trace, a Kentucky distillery, begins producing Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka under a joint venture between Firefly Distillery and Buffalo Trace’s parent, New Orleans-based Sazerac Co., The Post and Courier reported.

The 70-proof vodka is now sold in 11 states. Steve Wyant, Sazerac’s vice president of sales and marketing, told the newspaper it should reach nearly every state by Jan. 1.

“They just quickly realized that they can’t make enough to meet demand,” Wyant said. “That’s really the reason the partnership is working for us. We have the distribution network to get it set up quickly.”

Neither company would disclose the terms of the venture, which has not been finalized. It does not include Firefly’s other vodka, a muscadine wine flavor.

Six months from launch to national

Firefly partners Scott Newitt and Jim Irvin introduced Sweet Tea Vodka on April 20. They make it with real tea, Louisiana cane sugar and their muscadine-infused Firefly Premium Vodka at Irvin-House Vineyards, which also makes muscadine wines, the Post and Courier reported in July.

Local stores could not keep it in stock. Debbie Marlowe, owner of the Marina ABC store off Lockwood Drive, said in July that her store was moving five to seven cases a week.

“I call it a home run with the bases loaded,” Marlowe said then.

Newitt said Sweet Tea was the top-selling flavored vodka in South Carolina in May and June.

“We’re selling about 1,200 cases a week, and we’re out of stock all the time,” he said in July.

Irvin was more cautious. “I’m still nervous,” he said. “It (the bubble) could burst any second.”

At the time, the partners planned to ramp up to 2,000 cases a week, reach 10 Southern states by year’s end and 39 states within 12 months. They also planned to expand the Wadmalaw facility by 600 square feet.

Help from Florida, then Kentucky

In August, Firefly began supplementing production at a distillery in Orlando, Fla. The company said in a release that the Florida plant would make all Firefly products shipped outside South Carolina, while everything sold in the state would still come from Wadmalaw. It said it was looking for a larger site on Wadmalaw Island, Johns Island, in North Charleston or in downtown Charleston, with the goal of returning all production to South Carolina.

“We are and always will be a South Carolina product,” Newitt said in the release. “However, in order to meet the public’s demand, we feel that making this temporary change is necessary.”

Newitt said limited distribution was only part of the strain. Between taxes and supplies, the small distillery could not afford to keep up with demand.

“We would have to stop production,” Newitt told the Post and Courier this week. “We didn’t have any cash to buy bottles.”

Firefly representatives taught Buffalo Trace employees to make Sweet Tea Vodka to match the original recipe. All Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka sold in South Carolina will still be made on Wadmalaw, Newitt said. He said the company hopes to unveil new products in the coming months.

A crowded shelf

Firefly is selling into a crowded category. The number of flavored vodkas on the U.S. market rose from about 225 in 2003 to 350 last year, and flavored vodkas account for 14% of all vodka sales, almost double their share in 2000, according to Distilled Spirits Council of the United States figures cited by the Post and Courier in July.

Newitt said then that he expected knockoffs as early as January and wanted Firefly’s tea vodka in every market first.

“We’re in a race,” he said.

A dispute over the recipe

The recipe is the subject of a lawsuit. Richard Patrick, a former employee at Irvin-House Vineyards, alleges that he developed the Sweet Tea recipe, had only a verbal agreement with the vineyard’s managers and was pushed out two months after the product launched, the Post and Courier reported.

Patrick’s attorney, Clay McCullough, called the case a “general disagreement” about Patrick’s role at Firefly. Newitt would not comment on the suit.

“The one thing everybody agrees on is it’s a great product,” McCullough said. “We all want it to succeed.”