Moonshine goes legal, but daughter of famous moonshiner says illegal form of the beverage still exists in Appalachia

Moonshine sample at Ole Smoky Distillery in Pigeon Forge,
Tennessee (Photo by Keith Roysdon, The Daily Yonder)

First-aid kit? Grab some moonshine; it's better than hydrogen peroxide anyway. Home-brewed alcohol, known for its powerful kick, "has always been the stuff of Appalachian legends. For some, it was a way of life," reports Keith Roysdon of The Daily Yonder. "And it’s now a big business. Stills have been brought down from the hills, figuratively speaking, and set up along the Parkway in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee," neat the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, once the private land of moonshiners. "But not all the stills are out of the hills. Is moonshine – the unregulated, untaxed 'shine – still made by liquor renegades in hollers throughout the land?"

"Of course it is!" said Sky Sutton, daughter of the late Marvin 'Popcorn' Sutton, who was probably the best-known moonshiner in the region.

"The history of the product of corn distilled into powerful liquor is long and colorful and goes back beyond society’s image of a hillbilly tending a copper still in a thick stand of trees," Raysdon writes. "The Encyclopedia of Appalachia book notes that in the 1700s, immigrants from the British Isles and Northern Ireland imported their knowledge of distilling using copper pots and condensing coils, 'introducing a craft and eventually illegal enterprise that became a central element of the region’s identity.' The Encyclopedia notes that the production of moonshine boomed during the Prohibition years, 1920 to 1933."

The trickle of moonshine into mainstream liquor began when Tennessee "was making changes to its liquor laws, particularly in relation to the production, sales, and service of liquor and what’s branded as moonshine.  . . . With manufacturing overseen by the state, the federal government overseeing taxes and local municipalities deciding through referendums if they want to be dry or wet," Roysdon reports. "In the wake of changes in liquor laws, Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery entered the scene. In 2010, the distillery became the first federally licensed distillery in East Tennessee. The company’s original distillery opened in 2010 in Gatlinburg and the Pigeon Forge location opened in 2014."

Sky Sutton told Roysdon, “I think that over-the-counter moonshine and mountain-made likker are two different beasts. The over-the-counter kind now has its place on the shelves of liquor stores. The mountain-made kind is still elusive, mysterious, and much stronger. . . . I think the government and the black market – booze, betting, etc. – are both as old as dirt and will both stay around for a long time."