Scott Blackwell and Ann Marshall founded High Wire Distilling in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, in 2013, after Blackwell had sold the organic bakery he owned to General Mills. The distillery set out to make spirits from lost and forgotten grains, buying heritage grain from South Carolina family farms and doing its own milling, mashing, distilling and barrel aging. In early 2014 Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills gave it enough seed of Jimmy Red, a James Island moonshiner's corn that had dwindled to two ears, to plant 2.5 acres with Clemson University; the corn now yields more than 1.3 million pounds a year and is the basis of its flagship bourbon. Its rye is made from Wrens Abruzzi, an heirloom rye grown in the Carolinas for centuries. High Wire began distilling on a 530-gallon German pot still and, after moving to a larger building in 2018, added an 8,000-liter German hybrid pot-and-column still.