Becky 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.
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