Finally, it's cool to be rural (but we knew that)

Rural America, or at least urbanites' view of it, is becoming the hot trend in pop culture. "It's as clear as a dust cloud on the horizon coalescing into a stampede of bison: Call it country, Western, country-and-Western or something else altogether, but popular culture can't seem to get enough of rural Americana," Adam Tschorn of the Los Angeles Times reports.

Rural-flavored movies "True Grit" and "Country Strong" have experienced recent success at the box office, and Jennifer Lawrence is an Oscar best-actress nominee for her role in "Winter's Bone" (photo above). A doyenne of hipness, Gwyneth Paltrow, sings country music (photo below from "Country Strong") and "the Ralph Lauren women's spring/summer collection that's soon to hit stores has a distinct frontier glam flavor (think a rodeo's worth of leather and fringe, oversized steer-head belt buckles and lacy blouses with leg-of-mutton sleeves)," Tschorn writes.

The rural trend isn't confined to movies and fashion. "Moonshine has become as trendy as absinthe," Tschorn writes. "Canning and raising chickens have become hipster hobbies, and one of the most popular time-wasters on Facebook, FarmVille — played by nearly 55 million people this month alone — is a faux-farmstead game that has people harvesting virtual crops and tending to virtual livestock." Rural-focused cable network RFD-TV has seen a 74 percent average viewership increase since 2007, and Nashville-based CMT (Country Music Television) saw a 19 percent increase last year in viewers for its annual awards show.

"It's cool to be rural now," Patrick Gottsch, founder and chief executive of the Omaha-based Rural Media Group, which owns RFD-TV, told Tschorn. "For a while, there was a stigma [about the country] — that you had to move to the city to make a living. And that's been changing." Brad Beckerman, chief executive and co-founder of the Stillhouse brand, which has gained publicity for its urban moonshine, told Tschorn the rural focus is similar to the slow food movement. "It's the speed of everything," he said. "Thanks to things like the BlackBerry and the Internet, people are exhausted at how fast everything moves. People want to come back to center. They want to go to a moment in time when everything moved at a slower pace, back to their roots." (Read more)

Legal 'white dog' whiskey gaining popularity

White whiskey, no longer a solely rural phenomenon, may be more popular than ever. "It’s hard to know what to expect when you first encounter white whiskey," Anne Brockhoff writes for the Kansas City Star. "It’s clear, but it tastes nothing like grain alcohol or even vodka. Some of it is bottled at a whiskey-like 40 percent alcohol by volume, but there’s at least one (Buffalo Trace White Dog Mash #1) that’s a high-octane 62.5 percent alcohol by volume." While moonshine is by definition always illegal, many legal varieties of white whiskey are still being marketed as such, Brockhoff notes.

In his new book Chasing the White Dog Max Watman "rides along with law enforcement agents, befriends a former crackhead, sits through trials, builds his own still, delves into the craft distilling movement and learns to drive a race car," Brockhoff writes. "He finds urban criminals selling vast quantities of vile hooch, the occasional 'rarist' making old-fashioned liquor up in the hills and passionate hobbyists, some who’ve built their operations into viable, legal businesses." The book, Brockhoff writes, is a fun read that "perfectly captures a growing fascination with white whiskey — a fascination happily and legally now being fed by Death’s Door, Tuthilltown Spirits, Buffalo Trace and other distillers."

"We didn’t start out to make corn whiskey," distiller and co-owner of New York's Tuthilltown Spirits Ralph Erenzo told Brockhoff of his distillery's Hudson New York Corn Whiskey. "We started out to make an aged spirit, but when we tasted this, we thought it was so extraordinary, so new and different." Part of white whiskey's appeal is its use in cocktails, Brockhoff writes. "This (trend) has some legs because it’s a real expression of whiskey," Watman said. "It certainly has a place along the whiskey spectrum." (Read more)

Moonshine catching on as an urban drink?

Moonshine is leaving its mountain roots for bright lights of the big city. "Unaged hooch is no longer confined to Appalachia," Anna Sale of West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports for Marketplace. "Hipsters and foodies around the country are starting to acquire a taste for it. And that's given rise to a whole new industry of microdistillers." Since the passing of the Whiskey Act of 1791, making liquor without a license has been illegal, but Kentucky native Colin Spoleman brought moonshine to New York as state distilling laws began to relax to attract tourists to upstate farms.

Spoleman and friend David Haskell opened Kings County Distillery earlier this month on Staten Island, Sale reports. It's the only licensed whiskey distillery in New York City, and the first production on its shelves will be moonshine. The American Distilling Institute report the number of microdistilleries nationwide has increased from 60 seven years ago to over 200 today, but they still make up just under one percent of the U.S. liquor market.

Vaughn Wilson, an Arkansas still maker, has noticed an uptick in moonshine interest. He sells stills on his website but doesn't ask if they are going to legal operations, Sale writes. While Spoleman and Haskell plan to keep the micro in microbrewery, they hope to be stocking Brooklyn bars and liquor stores by June. (Read more)

Moonshine growing in national popularity as one Appalachian community cuts its 'revenuers'

Moonshining is experiencing a resurgence, but not where you might expect. A new generation of moonshiners, some who prefer to be called craft distillers, are popping up from California to New York, Catherine Price of Salon.com reports, and the next-generation stills are in suburban backyards instead of secluded mountains. Make no mistake, distilling homemade spirits without a license is a felony, but that hasn't stopped the new next-gen moonshiners.

Moonshing is often associated with prohibition and Appalachia, but today that definition is becoming less accurate, Price writes: "Since states' own priorities rarely involve busting people for 3-gallon stills of whiskey, most small-time moonshiners don't get caught." Distillers aren't likely to be poisoned or go blind either, since the make-it-quick haste of the prohibition era is gone. "It's more about culinary experimentation than it is about cheap hooch," Camper English, author of the cocktail and spirit blog Alcademics, tells Price. "They're trying to make something you can't find on store shelves." Laws against moonshining are unlikely to change anytime soon, Price writes, "If they want legalization, they have to show their faces." (Read more)

The emergence of national moonshining comes as one Appalachian community has cut the once vibrant Illegal Whiskey Unit of its police force. The unit, based in Franklin County, Va., has seen its staff of five full-time agents to one part-timer, Rex Bowman of The Roanoke Times reports. The cuts leave "southwest Virginia's elusive moonshiners without a full-time, dedicated foe for the first time in decades." Retirements and budget cuts have left the unit with no rebound in sight, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control feels it can control moonshining by charging all agents to pursue their own cases.

"I think the whiskey business is something in the past," former Franklin County Sheriff W.Q. "Quint" Overton told Bowman. "The drugs pretty much took over." Chris Goodman, the ABC agent in charge of the Roanoke office, says that may not be the case: "We're starting to see and get more information about some stills. It appears there's an uptick, and we're trying to address it." (Read more)

Iconic moonshiner developed a public following

The suicide of Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton on March 16 may have signaled the end of an era. The famous moonshiner of western North Carolina was an iconic figure. He not only published books and DVDs on making liquor, to the surprise of many he continued the practice despite all the public attention.

In 2007 Sutton was arrested with 850 gallons of liquor and three 1,000-gallon stills. Despite his obvious violation, the aged moonshiner received tremendous public support. "There are, as of this writing, 14 pages on Facebook dedicated to Popcorn," writes Max Watman for Gourmet magazine. "Every blog post or news article on the Web is followed by a long thread of comments, mostly expressing that the government ought to find something else to do and stop bothering a poor old hillbilly who was just making a living the only way he knew how. ... In late January, the 62-year-old moonshiner was sentenced to 18 months in a federal penitentiary, and, according to his wife and daughter, chose to take his own life rather than face the time." (Gourmet photo)

Writing on Sutton's dichotomy, Watman adds, "To the end, his act was as clear as corn liquor and muddled as the hangover it gives you. Where shtick ended and reality began is impossible to tell, but one thing is for sure: Lots of people on the Tennessee border are going to go thirsty." (Read more)

Moonshine bust shows industry still big in places

A big moonshine bust in southern Virginia's Piedmont has focused more attention on the industry that came with the first wave of Scots-Irish settlers and seems to be permanently imprinted in the culture of many counties in Appalachian Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky.

The latest bust "wasn't little Snuffy Smith with a little old still coming out of the woods, and I'm making four gallons of liquor and me and mama are sharing it on the porch," federal agent Bart McEntire told Jerry Markon of The Washington Post. "This was putting out over 1,000 gallons of a week. That's a significant amount of liquor." The bust was in Halifax County, but the main defendant lives in Franklin County, two counties to the west.

Markon writes, "People have always enjoyed their liquor in rural Franklin County, which calls itself the 'moonshine capital of the world,' a slogan seen on billboards and T-shirts and even at a moonshine exhibit on the campus of a local Methodist college." That would be the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College. (Post map by Laris Karklis)

After a crackdown about 10 years ago, authorities say "Moonshining is starting to make a comeback as moonshiners, who have been known to hide their stills behind fake headstones in cemeteries and camouflage them with green paint in the woods, adapt to the scrutiny," Markon reports. "Because moonshine is so ingrained in the culture and history of the region, the industry is clannish. Agents rarely find cooperators. Maybe once a year, they'll get a call with the precise location of a still." (Read more)

UPDATE, Sept. 6: Four men pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with the operation, Laurence Hammack of The Roanoke Times reports: "The defendants accepted plea agreements and will be sentenced later. As part of his standard questions, Judge James Turk asked each man to explain in his own words what he did to make him guilty." (Read more)