Silver Dew Winery – Daufuskie Island, South Carolina

The Silver Dew Winery is a historic winery located on Daufuskie Island in Beaufort County. The small building dates back to 1883 and originally served as a wick house (a building used to store the lighthouse lamp and wicks) for the Bloody Point Lighthouse.

The Bloody Point Lighthouse guarded the southernmost tip of the island until the early 1920s, when it was decommissioned and sold at a private auction to Francis Keenan. Former lighthouse keeper Gustaf Ohman purchased it from Keenan in 1924, only to sell it two years later to another former keeper, Arthur “Papy” Burn.

Papy loved the island and was very active in the small community. In the early 1950s, Papy began making scuppernong wine in the old wick house. By 1953 the brick building had been dubbed the Silver Dew Winery, and Papy was making wine out of grapes, elderberries, pears, and other fruits. The winery was made famous when South Carolina author Pat Conroy mentioned it in his 1972 autobiographical novel The Water is Wide:

The wick house is included (but not pictured) in the Daufuskie Island Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Special thanks to Steven Smith for sharing this picture he took in 2010.