Moonshine Makes A Comeback

[EdwardKnoxII 0]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/01/10/moo...e.ap/index.html

 

White lightning is making a comeback

 

FRENCHBURG, Kentucky (AP) -- Anna Childers doesn't look like the typical moonshiner.

 

But, then, she isn't making the typical moonshine.

 

The mother of four is adding a special touch to the potent corn whiskey to make what she calls moonshine jelly, a product that is quickly snatched from gift shop shelves at tourist hotspots across Kentucky.

 

"Oh, yes, it's popular," she said, holding a small jar that goes for about $2 per half pint. "People buy it up about as quickly as we can make it."

 

Childers, manager of Barton's Fine Foods in Frenchburg, is taking advantage of what some have described as a moonshine craze sweeping through Appalachia again, this time fueled in large part by tourists intrigued by the homemade liquor's mystique.

 

Tourism officials say many urban visitors to Appalachia tend to equate mountains with moonshine, which has pushed the price of the black-market elixir to $20 to $30 a quart. Some believe the demand has grown because communities suffering from job losses in the coal industry have begun to concentrate on tourism.

 

Larry Webster, an eastern Kentucky attorney who helps organize the annual Hillbilly Days Festival in Pikeville, said many tourists ask locals where they can find moonshine. And often, he said, locals can point them in the right direction.

 

"They're looking for the essence of hillbilly culture," Webster said. "And there's nothing that more symbolically captures that essence than moonshine liquor."

 

Some, against the best advice of local authorities, drink the stuff. Others take it back in Mason jars as a keepsake, occasionally unscrewing the lid to impress friends with a whiff of fumes.

 

"The golden age of moonshine is now," Webster said. "The government has quit hunting it. They took their manpower and started using it on firearms and explosives, deciding it was a waste of time to search through the hills for stills. As a result, you can get better moonshine now than you could during the Depression."

 

But Lawrence County Sheriff Garrett Roberts said the whiskey can be dangerous, even lethal, if not made correctly. Last month, an anonymous tipster reported a still after a relative drank some of the moonshine and got sick.

 

Study: Moonshine popular in urban areas

Moonshine whiskey's popularity isn't limited to rural communities. An Emory University study found that nearly 9 percent of 581 emergency care center patients surveyed at an Atlanta, Georgia hospital had consumed moonshine in the past five years.

 

The researchers, assisted by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, analyzed 100 moonshine samples and found 10 percent of them contained high enough levels of lead to make drinkers sick.

 

Despite the dangers, the mystique remains.

 

Like Barton's Fine Foods, companies across the South now offer moonshine jelly, which they say is both legal to sell and safe to eat.

 

Bryan Allphin, president of Southern Dream Foods in Louisville, said the corn whiskey evaporates in the jelly making process. His company distributes about 25,000 jars of the jelly each year -- most sold in gift shops at state parks and airports.

 

Dale Quillen, a Nashville, Tennessee, attorney who once worked as a state revenue agent, said very little homemade whiskey is being made now, though.

 

"There's always been a trickle of it," said Quillen, 78. "There's some fellows out there who make a little moonshine to have around. Just enough is going on to keep it from becoming a lost art."

 

Childers and her mother, Emma Agee, work side by side, making their moonshine jelly in a spotless, 55-gallon cooker in a building on the outskirts of Frenchburg, 50 miles east of Lexington. They add store-bought corn liquor, the legal kind, to a boiling mixture of pineapples, water and sugar.

 

"We don't wear the bib overalls, the flannel shirts, the boots, like old-time moonshiners," Agee said. "But after we make a batch of this jelly, we smell like them. The odor really gets in your clothes."

[Guest Choken One]

wow. Hillbillies are fucking real?

 

I always thought that was just a Vince McMahon creation...

[1234-5678 0]

Man, people looooooooove getting fucked up.

[Guest FrigidSoul]

Finally my dream of getting drunk off of toast can be reality

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

'You can get better moonshine now than you could during the depression'

 

REJOICE!

[Nevermortal 0]

What's the proof on moonshine? I don't drink anything less than 80.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

About 190ish. Made properly, White Lightning is essentially pure grain alcohol. It tastes about as good as you'd figure.

[Nevermortal 0]

Everclear is 190....but its legal. What makes moonshine illegal?

[EricMM 0]

It's not controlled by the govt.

 

Not taxed or regulated.

 

Lke growing your own tobacco.

[Mole 0]

I thought Green Fairy was the worst.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Moonshine? What, did I stumble into a Dukes of Hazard episode?

[Guest BDC]

No, no you didn't. Btw, the Green Fairy is absinth, which had lead and such that ate holes in your brain, thus making it illegal. That's why France outlawed it.

 

You'd be surprised at how Appalachia is trying to draw money in. If we take it from those fucking tourists that come in and make 'no shoe' jokes and ask why we have all our teeth, all the better.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

..never doin' no harm..

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

'cept to they own brains...