The Williams family has deep agricultural roots in Arkansas, tracing back to the late 1800s. Four generations ago, the Phillips County farm they know today was originally sharecropped by their family patriarch. This land continues to deliver, but now with a different mash-up compared to traditional agriculture. Why? Because the Williamses make vodka out of sweet potatoes. 

The idea was born in 2017, when Harvey Williams Jr., and his wife Donna co-founded Delta Dirt Distillery, a farm-to-bottle craft operation. Their adult children, Thomas, Donavan, and TaHara, are part of the family business, and together they specialize in award-winning sweet potato vodka, along with other craft options like gin and Arkansas Brown. 

 Farm Press recently took a guided tour of Delta Dirt Distillery, where Thomas shared the history of the farm and what led their family to launch this business model. 

Sharecropping, moonshine, and sweet potatoes 

The storefront of Delta Dirt Distillery brings a modern vibrance set against the backdrop of downtown Helena-West Helena. However, if you dig a little deeper, the real story starts in the field. 

The Williams story began with 86 acres, sharecropped by Joe Williams, the family’s first-generation farmer. His son, U.D. Williams, continued the agricultural legacy and purchased that land in 1949 by his sale of cotton and homemade moonshine. 

Related:On-farm distillery adds value to crops

Next, Harvey Williams Sr. came along as the third-generation farmer. However, he switched gears from row crops to vegetable production. He began growing sweet potatoes and squash to broaden marketing perspective and profitability. Years later, those sweet potatoes would take the Williams family to a new level. 

Just a few years ago, Harvey Williams Jr. was living out of state with his wife Donna. They wanted to move back home to the family farm in eastern Arkansas. It was then that distilling vodka came into the picture. His son, Thomas, recalled the conversation. “If vodka can be made from anything else, why not sweet potatoes? What reason could we not run our own distillery?”  

Harvey Jr. researched what it would take and tasked Thomas with distilling. “I give my dad the visionary credit,” Thomas said. “He was the one who said this is the business we are going to do. He asked me to figure out how to distill, and we just made it work.” 

After trial and error, Delta Dirt Distillery released its first run of Sweet Blend Vodka in December 2020, made with corn and sweet potatoes grown on the family farm. They opened the distillery doors on April 1, 2021. From there, they expanded their spirit lines to Tall Cotton Gin and a small-batch Arkansas Brown called Deep Roots.   

Related:How a farm-grown idea got its breakthrough

Distilling in the Delta 

Walking through the doors of Delta Dirt Distillery gives a warm and inviting ambiance. The spacious front room is softly lit, and a cozy seating area leads to a large bar top. Take one glance around, and you can see smiles across the room as folks enjoy good company and their choice of Arkansas-made beverages. 

This space is also available for events. While Farm Press was there, the venue was hosting a wedding shower for a long-time family friend. Thomas said, “That was what we were going for, for everyone to feel welcome and always feel at home.” 

Behind the bar are panoramic windows that offer a view of the distillery. In the forefront, four tall columns are beautifully showcased. Beyond that are fermentation tanks, where the magic begins. 

Thomas explained the process from start to finish. First is the mash. Raw ingredients are mixed with an enzyme to turn starches into sugar. These raw ingredients range from sweet potatoes or corn to barley or rye. It all depends on the end product. 

“Sweet potatoes have a different process than grains,” Thomas said. “The temperature and enzyme requirements are transitively different.”  

Next, the concoction is placed into tanks, where yeast ferments the sugar into alcohol. This timeframe fluctuates, based on the season of the year. In the summer, the distillery is warm, speeding up the fermentation process to around three days. However, in the winter it takes nearly a week to ferment the mixture. 

From there, the concoction is distilled, and three cuts are made to separate the heads, hearts, and tails. Thomas explained each of the components that lead to a state-of-the-art drink. 

At Delta Dirt, vodka is distilled twice. The fermented mixture is heated in two copper stills, and Thomas pointed out the 10 sight glasses aligned down the tall vertical structures. He said, “We do not need to distill it more than twice because of these two columns. In each one of those sight glasses is a copper plate, and a mini redistillation takes place at each one of those plates.  

“As the mixture hits that plate, it condenses back to a liquid, and it can only pass to the next plate as a vapor. So, it is being redistilled about 20 different times.” 

Immediately next to the copper columns is a shorter stainless-steel column, called a gin basket, exclusively used to distill gin. Thomas said, “When you open that up, there is a little wire tray where you put in all the botanicals – the juniper berries, orange peel, angelica, and coriander – which are vapor infused into the alcohol as it passes through the column.” 

The last and farthest right column is a condenser. It never gets hot, so the color of this column remains black, and its job is to return the distillate to a liquid. 

Award winning spirits 

After distillation, the final product is sent through the bottling line where bottles are cleaned, filled, corked, labeled, and sealed. No matter the beverage, whether vodka, gin, or Arkansas Brown, the result is a clean, smooth drink. You can taste the passion and hard work behind the process that took years to perfect. 

Thomas said, “For the first eight months, I was the only employee from start to finish.” Now the family is four years into the business, and their dedication to the farm and the craft are recognized both regionally and nationally. 

Harvey Jr. serves as CEO, and his wife Donna is the brand manager. Thomas is the head distiller, and Donavan is operations manager. Together, they have earned numerous awards including 2023 tourism attraction of the year and others for packaging, product branding, website and small business. 

They also brought home platinum honors from the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Receiving a platinum award is a big accomplishment, because it requires three consecutive years of double gold awards based on a panel of judges who participate in blind taste testing. 

Irrefutably, the family conversation that took place in 2017 completely transformed the Williams’s farm business model. From awards to each and every quality driven sip, their accomplishments are undeniable. In fact, their recent Deep Roots release in the fall of 2024 was a sellout. 

If you want to see more, check out the slideshow of the distillery tour. Even better, go see for yourself, and cozy up to the bar while enjoying good conversation and a drink from the Natural State. Learn more and book a Delta Dirt Distillery tour on their website at https://deltadirtdistillery.com.