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001-208_C70365.indd 1 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine2/11/14 3:31 PM (PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:1 001-208_C70365.indd 2 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine2/11/14 3:31 PM 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:2 001-208_C70365.indd 3 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine2/11/14 3:31 PM (PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:3 acknowledgments I’d like to thank Erik Gilg for making this project happen and the New York Public Library for being the irreplaceable resource that it is. I’m also grateful for the assistance of several people: Mari Keiko Gonzalez, Don Heiny, Paco Joyce, Tami Brockway Joyce, Bartram Nason, Katy Olson, and Ginia Sweeney. Thank you all so much. Cheers! First published in 2014 by Zenith Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA © 2014 Zenith Press Text © 2014 Jaime Joyce All photographs are from the author’s collection unless noted otherwise. All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purposes of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the Publisher. The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the author or Publisher, who also disclaims any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details. We recognize, further, that some words, model names, and designations mentioned herein are the property of the trademark holder. We use them for identification purposes only. This is not an official publication. Zenith Press titles are also available at discounts in bulk quantity for industrial or sales-promotional use. For details write to Special Sales Manager at Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA. To find out more about our books, visit us online at www.zenithpress.com. ISBN-13: 978-0-7603-4584-9 Digital edition: 978-1-62788-207-1 Hardcover edition: 978-0-76034-584-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Joyce, Jaime, 1971- Moonshine : a cultural history of America's infamous liquor / by Jaime Joyce. pages cm ISBN 978-0-76034-584-9 (hardback) 1. Drinking of alcoholic beverages--United States--History. 2. Distilling, Illicit--United States--History. I. Title. GT2893.J69 2014 663'.5--dc23 2013047071 Editor: Erik Gilg Design Manager: James Kegley Cover Designer: John Barnett Layout Designer: Brenda Canales Printed in China 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001-208_C70365.indd 4 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine3/11/14 2:30 PM (PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:4 acknowledgments Table of Contents Prologue Bangin’ in the Woods 6 1 “The Pernicious Practice of Distilling” in Early America 16 2 Whiskey Rebels, “Watermelon Armies,” and President Washington 28 3 War on Whiskey: Taxing Liquor and Defying the Law in the 1800s 42 4 Prohibition’s Rise and Fall, and What Happened in Between 60 5 Moonshine on Trial 74 6 “Death Defying Ding-Dong Daddies from the Realm of Speed”: Moonshine and the Birth of NASCAR 88 7 “Popskull Crackdown” 106 8 Moonshine Renaissance 122 9 Making Mountain Dew 142 10 Moonshine in Pop Culture 154 Epilogue Moonshiners Reunion 168 Notes & Sources 177 PHOTO & music CREDITS 200 Index 204 001-208_C70365.indd 5 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine2/11/14 3:31 PM (PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:5 PROLOGUE BANGIN’ IN THE WOODS Well, the deacon drove by in his auto so shined, Said his family was down with the flu. And he thought that I ought to get him a quart Of that good old mountain dew. —Bascom Lamar Lunsford, “Good Old Mountain Dew,” 1928 (recorded in 1947 by country artist Grandpa Jones and covered by the alternative rock band Ween on their 1999 concert album Paintin’ the Town Brown: Ween Live ’90–’98) 6 001-208_C70365.indd 6 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine2/11/14 3:31 PM (PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:6 PROLOGUE anging on a white-pine-paneled wall inside Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery, in Dawsonville, H Georgia, is a large, framed photograph of an Appalachian moonshiner. The old man is seated beneath a tree in a high-back chair nestled in a thicket of tall grass, looking country sharp in blue denim Red Camel overalls, a plaid shirt buttoned up tight to the collar, and a little brown crumpled hat, the type that people in these parts refer to as a moonshiner’s bonnet. His pose—chin up, unsmiling, head turned halfway to a silhouette, while gripping a flask of clear corn whiskey with both hands, one on the body, the other on its neck—suggests a BANGIN’ craftsman’s pride. It also looks as if he’s about to twist off the lid and take a sip. In a different setting, the portrait might seem like a IN THE WOODS marketing gimmick. But here, it’s personal history. The man in the photograph is a Georgia moonshiner of some renown, by the name of Simmie Free. He was Cheryl Wood’s granddad, and Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery is Cheryl Wood’s baby. She opened the place in 2012, after nearly a decade in management at AT&T. “It was my family business forever, but it was an illegal family business,” Wood says of making moonshine. “I had an idea to take it legal.” Wood also had the idea to open the business in the same building as Dawsonville City Hall, which also happens to be in the same building as the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, a shrine to local legends like Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall, both of whom got their start running homemade liquor from Dawson County to shot joints in Atlanta, some 60 miles to the south. So Wood—a friendly blonde, whose nickname, “Happy,” sums up her cheerful demeanor—met with mayor Joe Lane Cox, and made her pitch. “He thought the town needed it,” Wood says. “He called it the missing piece.” 7 001-208_C70365.indd 7 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine2/11/14 3:32 PM (PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:7 The plan made perfect sense. Decades ago, Dawson County earned the title Moonshine Capital of the World for the unusually large number of stills uncovered in the area by federal revenue agents, and since 1967, Dawsonville, the county seat, has hosted each fall the Mountain Moonshine Festival. One highlight of the annual event is a parade of vintage cars—mostly Fords, which were popular for their powerful V-8 engines—the very ones that once sailed through the hills on the way to market, tail ends heavy with the weight of Mason jars and gallon-size tin cans filled with liquid corn. Always notably absent from the festival, however, has been legal moonshine. Legal moonshine, of course, is something of an oxymoron. By definition, moonshine is liquor for which taxes have not been paid. Purists say it’s made from corn, though moonshine can and has been produced using nearly anything that ferments. Moonshine is used to describe a beverage made at night—by the light of the moon—in an attempt to avoid detection by law enforcement agents eager to arrest shiners and bust up their stills. Another definer: Moonshine is unaged— young and raw. It’s clear, like vodka or gin, not amber or brown, like whiskey, which is matured in white-oak barrels to mellow the taste and give the spirit color. Moonshine has been described as whiskey without the wood. Traditionally, it’s associated with the South. Today, moonshine has entered the mainstream. A growing number of legal distilleries, big and small, across the United States, from Brooklyn, New York, to Seattle, Washington, to Buena Vista, Colorado, are making it. Drinkers are eager for a taste of America’s homegrown spirit, and if it’s made by small producers out of locally sourced ingredients, the appeal is even greater. Some distillers, like Heather Shade of the upstart Port Chilkoot Distillery in Haines, Alaska, call their product moonshine and embrace the drink’s renegade past. “It’s a new product that’s giving a tribute to a traditional one,” Shade says, rejecting the literalism of critics who contend that if you’re paying taxes on your whiskey you can’t call it moonshine. 8 Prologue 001-208_C70365.indd 8 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshine2/11/14 3:32 PM (PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:8 Other distillers market their unaged whiskey as white dog or white lightning—both synonyms for moonshine. Heaven Hill Distilleries, in Bardstown, Kentucky, which distributes a diverse range of spirits, including Evan Williams bourbon and Hpnotiq, a candy-colored French liqueur, goes for the more precise terminology, calling its line of white dogs “new make,” as in whiskey fresh from the still, untouched by the barrel. Corn whiskey at Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery is made from a 150-year-old family recipe passed down through Simmie Free by fourth-generation moonshiner Dwight Bearden, who’s known as “Punch.” Bearden says he picked up the nickname as a young man after getting into a fistfight with federal agents who wanted to send him to the penitentiary for making illegal liquor. When asked how he learned his trade, he likes to tell people he read about it in a book. Press him a bit, though, and Bearden admits that he’s been “tinkering around stills” since he was about 6 or 7 years old.

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