I greatly appreciate your clarifications, especially being very green and learning all about the industry myself. They are detailed and helpful.
I'd also like to clarify, and echo what Hewlette has pointed out. That is that he did not write the article. I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with the newspaper that wrote the story nor Terressentia. I was simply pointing to a story that ran in a local news outlet. Charleston and the Lowcountry region of South Carolina have a deep and celebrated history. That extends to the food and beverage industry. We take great pride as local citizens when another citizen's business succeeds. You can attribute the enthusiastic writing in the article to that pride and excitement, especially given our collective current economic situation. The Firefly Distillery, which is also considered local to Charleston, was and continues to be celebrated and praised in our local news as well.
My point is this: I posted this as someone who is new to the industry, asking what the veterans thought of it because I did not have the base of knowledge to form an opinion of it initially. I did so without Hewlette's knowledge, as I do not know him. Again, I greatly appreciate the feedback from everyone. Thanks to this discussion I have formed my own opinions and have my own answers to my initial questions.
That being said, I think Hewlette caters to a very different market than the distillers here typically seek to enter. We have some extraordinary, award winning chefs who call Charleston home. As mentioned in the article, local restaurants which are owned by some of these same chefs are adopting these spirits as their "house" brands of liquor. They are branding an entire line of spirits specifically to that restaurant. While this is not new, it is likely appealing to these chefs to have a special brand of spirits in their restaurants. These spirits will likely take up residence in the rail/well, where the average customer will enjoy what is said to be a tasty spirit. While he may have to compete with Diageo in your average franchise restaurant, these guys are at the top of their game and a private label liquor is worth any extra cost to them. This appears to be a relatively accessible (quick, relatively painless) way to get a family/business/personal name on a bottle for those who do not have extensive knowledge of distilling or the spirits industry. If that's what they want, then I'd say he probably doesn't have to beat Diageo on price. His website also mentions other avenues of customers that they expect to cater to, restaurants being the one mentioned in the article. That's just my 2 cents.