WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY CARRIE DOW
THE
POWER OF
PIXIE Entrepreneur Paula ‘Pixie’ Dezzutti has built a spirits and entertainment empire in Charleston, South Carolina. She’s about to go global.
“W
e are market leaders in all categories of spirits, but I know I’m not on this planet to sell vodka,” announced Paula ‘Pixie’ Dezzutti inside the tasting room of one of her many business ventures, Striped Pig Distillery in Charleston, South Carolina. “My goal is to take a trillion-dollar industry and turn it into a philanthropic, give-back initiative, where we exchange brand loyalty for the consumers’ dollars, and we support their own initiatives.”
PHOTO PROVIDED BY STRIPED PIG DISTILLERY
Fifteen minutes earlier, I was perusing the distillery’s merchandise waiting for her to arrive when she entered talking on a cell phone. She waved hello while walking past and still talking on the phone went into the distillery area to check in with two of her sons who work alongside her — one a distiller and operations manager and the other the tasting room and retail manager. Returning to the tasting room she ends the call and asks, “Are you the writer?” I answered yes, but before I could formally introduce myself or ask
a single question, she jumped right in. And never stopped. “Oh, my book on NFTs just came out. It went for pre-release on my birthday, June 3, which is also [Striped Pig’s] 10th anniversary. We took our trillion-dollar industry to the blockchain by formally launching, minting, and creating the first NFT opportunity in our space around 111 individual NFTs represented by the first barrel of bourbon ever made in South Carolina. Now everybody is talking about NFTs in the beverage space. And with my book …” she paused glancing at the digital recorder in my hand. “Well, there’s a lot. I hope you’re recording.”
MEET PIXIE: A ONE-WOMAN POWER STATION A 60-year-old petite blond with a sparkling smile, Dezzutti is a single mother of nine adult children and grandmother of ten. She could easily be mistaken for your kid’s grade school W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M
teacher, but inside beats the heart of a lion with the stubbornness of a bulldog. She moves fast and talks faster. If you can’t keep up, too bad because she doesn’t have the time or inclination to explain things twice or wait for permission. She’s too busy building an empire. After 20 years in the financial and real estate sectors, Dezzutti was already a successful businesswoman when she first entered the spirits industry in 2009 as an investor, consultant, and executive marketing director for Terressentia Corporation, a contract distillery in North Charleston. Shortly thereafter, Terressentia bought a distillery in Owensboro, Kentucky, called OZ Tyler, a defunct distillery that hadn’t made a bourbon since 1992, but did have a claim to fame for being Kentucky’s 10th licensed distillery first issued in 1885. After changing the distillery’s name back to its original — Green River — the distillery put out a bourbon that quickly developed a following before
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