By Bonita Wilborn
Years ago, in the deep south, the art of tracking down and drinking moonshine were considered a rite of passage. Whether it’s the booze’s rebellious history or its dangerous reputation, moonshine has cemented a place in the culture at large.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), moonshine is defined as “whisky or other strong alcoholic drinks made and sold illegally.” With that definition, it may be confusing to walk into liquor stores, or Costco, and find booze labeled as moonshine.
Part of the problem lies in the lack of federal requirements for labeling something as moonshine.
Unlike whiskey, which must be made from grain, distilled and bottled at a certain alcohol content, and aged in oak, ‘shine has no equivalent. Like vodka, it can be made from anything fermentable: fruit, sugar, grain, or milk. Like vodka, there’s no upper limit on its alcohol content. Unless you want to describe it as white whiskey on the label, you can make it any way you please. So, despite what you might have read in the OED, legally made hooch labeled “moonshine” is all over the place.
Despite its super Southern connotation, hooch isn’t exclusively a Southern drink. The term moonshine has been around since the late 15th century, but it was first used to refer to liquor during the 18th century in England.
The American roots of the practice (and of modern American whiskey production in general) have their origins in frontier life in Pennsylvania and other grain-producing states. At the time, farms with grain mills would distill their excess product so that it wouldn’t spoil. Back then; whiskey was even used in some places as currency.
In 1791, the federal government imposed a tax on liquor made in the country, known as the “whiskey tax.” For the next three years, distillers held off the tax collectors by less-than-legal means, which brought a U.S. marshal to Pennsylvania to collect the taxes owed. More than 500 men attacked the area’s tax inspector general’s home. Their commander was killed, which inspired a protest of nearly 6000 people. The tax was eventually repealed in 1801, and the events from the decade prior came to be known as the Whiskey Rebellion.
A lot of the lore and legend surrounding moonshine is true. Bad batches or certain production techniques (like distilling in car radiators) could result in liquor that could make you go blind, or worse. Though some moonshiners claim that these stories were spread in an effort to discredit their work, legal producers differ. Either way, the federal government commissioned Louis Armstrong to record radio ads about the dangers of drinking it.
Don’t confuse moonshiners with bootleggers. Moonshiners make the liquor, while bootleggers smuggle it. The term bootlegger refers to the habit of hiding flasks in the boot tops around the 1880s, but with the introduction of cars, it came to mean anyone who smuggled booze.
Mechanics quickly found ways to soup up engines and modify cars to hide and transport as much moonshine as possible. In running from the law, these whiskey runners acquired some serious driving skills. On their off days, they’d race against each other, a pastime that would eventually breed NASCAR. The two were so closely linked, in fact, that a moonshiner gave seed money for NASCAR to its founder Bill France. Another well-known link is Robert Glenn Johnson, better known as Junior Johnson. As the son of a notorious moonshiner, this former driver and NASCAR team owner recently partnered with a North Carolina-based distillery to produce “Midnight Moon.”
Whether you call it rotgut, home brew, white lightning, firewater, mountain dew, or just moonshine—its all the same thing.
The manufacture of moonshine in the mountains is not dead, far from it! As long as the operation of a still continues to be financially rewarding, it will never die. There will always be men ready to take their chances against the law for such an attractive profit, and willing to take their punishment when they are caught.
Moonshining Making is a fine art, however, effectively disappeared some time ago. There were several reasons. One was the age of aspirin and modern medicine. As home doctoring lost its stature, the demand for pure corn whiskey as an essential ingredient of many home remedies vanished along with those remedies. Increasing affluence was another reason. Young people, rather than follow in their parents’ footsteps, decided that there were easier ways to make money, and they were right.
Third, and perhaps most influential of all, was the arrival, even in moonshining, of that peculiarly human disease known to most of us as greed. One fateful night, some force whispered in an unsuspecting moonshiner’s ear, “Look, add this gadget to your still and you’ll double your production. Double your production, and you can double your profits.”
Soon the small operators were being forced out of business, and moonshining, like most other manufacturing enterprises, was quickly taken over by a breed of men bent on making money, and lots of it. Loss of pride in the product, and loss of time taken with the product increased in direct proportion to the desire for production; and thus moonshining as a fine art was buried in a quiet little ceremony attended only by those mourners who had once been the proud artists, known far and wide across the hills for the excellence of their product.
Too old to continue making it themselves, and with no one following behind them, they were reduced to reminiscing about “the good old days when the whiskey that was made was really whiskey, and there were no questions asked.”
Far back in the hills you might find the remains of a small stone furnace and a wooden box and barrel. Upon describing the location to several people, you’d amazed to discover that they all knew whose still it had been. They can all affirm from that still had come some of the “finest home brew these mountains ever saw. Nobody makes it like that any more.”