moonshine - Dark Corner Distillery

moonshine
This page:LawlessTom Hardy
(near) and co give chase
Whitelightning,
&hiddenstills
souped up Fords
As the latest film Lawlessbrings brings to life the
bootlegging era, Jim Leggettgoes in search of
the real moonshiners
F
“
reedom and whisky gang thegither."
Nowhere was Burns salute to whisky
and freedom more robustly celebrated
than among South Carolina’s splendidly
rugged foothills.
Early Scots-Irish settlers turned abundant
cheap corn into profitable 'likker' with great
enthusiasm. Even today a trek through
rolling backwoods turns up rusted wreckage
of illicit stills hiding among great stands of
river birches, ash leaf and scarlet maples.
Bloody insurrection, moonshiners vs.
lawmen, began when US Secretary of the
Treasury Alexander Hamilton suggested
taxing whiskey to pay off America’s massive
$21million dollar Independence War debt.
Moon-shining was further encouraged as
unethical politicians, bribed to promote big
Eastern distillers, taxed, jailed and tried to
kill off any traces of rural production in the
Southern States.
u
Issue 107 | WHISKY Magazine | 13
moonshine
This page: From Lawless, Guy Pearce as
the crooked Special Deputy Charles
Rakes is after a share of the Bondurant
brothers' profits
Hapless tax men, "Revenooers" locals call
them, were tarred and feathered; their homes
looted. The Whiskey Wars (1791-1794)
spawned spirited defiance, even as hidden
stills bubbled, whiskey flowed and
contraband jugs changed hands.
Farmers and homesteaders fought back;
soon untaxed white lightning gurgled
abroad so merrily George Washington,
himself a distiller, offered a $200 reward for
the capture of excise opponents; Judas' were
few in whiskey-dependent South Carolina.
Prohibition came next, a farcical insanity,
so the events of history evidenced. Booze
laws were ignored and flaunted everywhere,
making many a poor man rich, spawning
mayhem everywhere.
Blistering car chases were common as
14 | WHISKY Magazine | Issue 107
double-shocked souped-up Ford V-8 tanker
cars, running 1,000-gallon loads of
moonshine, outran the law most of the time.
The exploits of these daring distillers have
even entered movie lore. The action has been
brought right up to date with the latest film
Lawless. Set in Depression-era Franklin
County, Virginia, the film centres on the
brothers Jack, Forrest and Howard
Bondurant, a bootlegging gang, who are
threatened by a new deputy and other
authorities who want a cut of their profits.
Thunder Road, Robert Mitchum's 1958
classic film, depicts those hell-fire times
when real life country boy 'trippers' (drivers)
like moonshiner legend Junior Johnson and
his like founded stock car racing, later to
become NASCAR.
Jeff Bridges played Junior in 1973's action
biography The Last American Hero, Junior,
now aged 81, still makes 'likker'. See page 18
for more about Junior.
In 2011, Spartanburg County Sheriffs
found an elaborate illicit distillery in a
woodland orchard. It took a gun, an axe and
half a dozen deputies to get rid of more than
1,500 gallons of moonshine found on the
property; $150,000 in cash and four 55-gallon
stills were also seized.
“The suspects were real cooperative, even
showed us how the stills worked," a
bemused deputy revealed.
So with this in mind it was time to do
some barstool sleuthing for the story.
"Legal moonshine?" quipped gin-mill
connoisseur Claude Mabes. "Can't hardly be,
I never heard o' nobody as makes white
lightnin' the law ain't after!"
Boasting Cherokee blood, a good nose for
sniffing out 'shine, he delivers his wisdom.
South! says he, and off we go to
Greenville, South Carolina to investigate.
Where Cherokee Indians roamed these
wooded lands in times past, a town of
modern charms stands today.
However back in the roaring 1920s it was
nicknamed Little Chicago thanks to fierce
liquor making feuds, knife fights and
bootleg-driven lawlessness.
We soon tracked down a new fangled
small scale distillery, right in the middle of
old downtown!
Above a quaint 1925 era brick building a
sign reads Dark Corner Distillery.
It is said back in the 1800s a perplexed
preacher, upset, as some of the clergy get
about booze, prophesised: "the Light will
never shine in that dark corner." Well, that
mystique and the name stuck.
Inside a bright and cheery shoe-box
shaped store an 80-gallon copper pot-still
works its magic.
Proprietor Joe Fenten, a Dark Corner
native, and partner Richard Wenger, a noted
home beer brewer, saw in this once banned
silver liquid a golden opportunity; opening
the State's first legal still to "immediate
applause,” he confessed. “Moonshine does
not have to age, so we were in business from
day one and selling jugs right away.”
A few old timers stop by asking if they too
can get legal, says Joe, since changes to liquor
laws in S.C. and other states made it lawful
for small distilleries to set up shop.
"Moonshine is a quintessential element of
the identity of the Dark Corner region," he
explains. "Our work to revive it sheds light
on a heritage too long dismissed by outsiders
as “backwoods.”
Corn whiskey is a foundation and
“We work to echo the spirit of old time
Dark Corner, concentrating on the use
of locally sourced grains and native
botanicals” – John Wilcox
u
moonshine
expression of local identity tied to the land
through time honoured use of local raw
materials. Local farmers thought it was their
inalienable, God-given right to make
whiskey. "It was a hard life! If you could
make an extra 10 cents more for a gallon of
whiskey than you could from a bushel of
corn, why not?"
Whiskey and Bourbon were practically the
only currency of harsh Depression years.
There was no money to be made. Liquor
served as cash, and medicine for colic, colds
and assorted fevers. Sick families were poor,
too far from any doctors. The latter paid in
chickens, food or Moonshine.
The new distillery had just opened when
two VIP Scottish visitors dropped by. The
Earl of Eglinton, Chief of Clan Montgomery,
and Alexander, The Duke of Hamilton.
(Alexander is only person allowed to
precede the Queen as she makes her
annual pilgrimage to the Scottish Parliament
in Edinburgh.)
The Scots arrived in S.C. to officiate at the
16 | WHISKY Magazine | Issue 107
annual Gallabrae Greenville Scottish Games,
keen to learn about early Scots settlers, and
hoist a dram of gin-clear 100-proof corn
liquor too.
"The Duke never tasted moonshine
before," Joe recalled. "Amazingly, he didn't
feel any after effect...but I did notice he broke
out into a sweat."
Generous drams of dark Bourbon
followed, proclaimed by the Duke to be:
"incredibly smooth."
Meandering up to the still we cannily
befriended master distiller John Wilcox, an
enthusiastic 33-year-old autodidactic in the
art of whiskey making, in hope he might
share some secrets, over a wee dram.
John's moonshine is surprisingly smooth;
with faint aroma of corn, a light black pepper
accent giving it a noticeable kick, robust
body; warming glow as the potent dram
goes down. Not taking your breath away (as
did some frightening sips of illegal 175 to 190
proof mountain liquor that I managed to
sample elsewhere...Shh!)
The mashbill uses local corn, red
wheat, two-row barley and rye ground at
Suber's Mill, built in 1908; the region's only
surviving waterwheel mill.
"Our whiskey mix uses 82 per cent corn,
the remainder being adjunct grains. Our
water supply originates from two Blue Ridge
Mountain springs. We work to echo the
spirit of old time Dark Corner, concentrating
on the use of locally sourced grains and
native botanicals."
One brew is South Carolina’s first handmashed Bourbon since Prohibition and is
already winning awards. In the works are
peach and apple brandies, pepper-laced
moonshine and gins; popular bevy in these
parts since the days of drafty outhouses,
horses and carts and corn-cob pipes.
“Our work is an extension of folk art. We
are self-taught, steeped in cultural identity as
defined by a region with a very colourful
history.” Joe concludes.
Colourful indeed… W
© MOMENTUM PICTURES | JIM LEGGETT
This page, clockwise from left: An
example of a small illicit still; sampling
the‘shine; the film poster for Lawless