Moonshiner - Apple Pie, Moonshine, Woods

From deep in the hollers of Appalachia comes an amazing new collaboration with Rick Bowman, sure to whet the whistle of apple lovers everywhere. This is Moonshiner: Fresh Apple. The art of moonshining has its roots in Scottish and Irish immigrants who brought the practice of making unaged, barley mash whiskey to America. These immigrants began using the more widely available maize corn to produce the corn mash moonshine that is popular today. Moonshiners gained the most notoriety during Prohibition in the 1920’s, however, moonshining began much earlier in the most American way possible.

The need for illicit whiskey began with the Tariff of 1791 which outlawed all non-registered whiskey stills, and created taxes for all legally produced spirits that culminated in the prohibition of all alcohol production in the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. This tariff led to a series of other Acts that further taxed spirits, putting rural farmers in an interesting predicament. Lawmakers criminalized not only a tradition that ran for generations, but also a practice that increased the value of the crop that farmers created, while inadvertently creating a black market for untaxed (or just available) liquor. The lucrative business opportunity was not only irresistible, but necessary to many wily farmers in the impoverished Appalachian mountains who knew the backwood roads much better than state “revenuers.” These Moonshiners became the new outlaws of the eastern mountains, continuing even to the present day.

The Moonshiner profile greets you with the smell of a fresh apple orchard, the ripe and juicy smell of apples dancing through your senses. However, the seductive and boozy notes bring you to a night in the mountains behind that orchard, distilling corn whiskey amongst the cedar trees. Better get it before the revenuers do: Moonshiner: Fresh Apple!