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Still
Waters Run Deep
“NASCAR
Dads” have been in the news lately with the
President’s well-publicized trek to the Daytona
500 on February 15. With several official NASCAR
racetracks in the Commonwealth, and one within
spitting distance in Bristol, Tennessee, it’s high time for a meditation on the mythic
origin of stock car racing. It’s spelled
m-o-o-n-s-h-i-n-e.
Legend
has it that early NASCAR champions cut their teeth
(or their treads) outrunning state and Federal
“revenuers.” The battle between moonshiners and
the government is centuries old and continues to
this day. It dates from the Whiskey Rebellion of
1794, when farmers in western Pennsylvania
rebelled against a Federal tax on whiskey. The
revenue was sought to pay Revolutionary War debts.
George Washington led 10,000 troops to put down the
rebellion, and the farmers countered by launching
the home-based business of making whiskey by the
light of the moon. Thus was born the term
“moonshine.”
This
illegal alcoholic beverage goes by many other names,
including white lightning, rotgut, Happy Sally or
stump, according to the March 23, 2000 New York Times article “U.S. Cracks Down on Rise In Appalachia
Moonshine.” However, if you’re an agent from the
Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
& Firearms, or the Virginia Department of
Alcohol Beverage Control, you call it
“non-tax-paid liquor.”
In
2000, agents from ATF and the ABC agencies in Virginia
and North Carolina
shut down a large moonshining operation centered in Franklin
County,
Virginia
after a two-year investigation. The sophisticated
descendants of Depression-era moonshiners, who once
made whiskey in backyard 50-gallon stills, were now
using 800-gallon stills, sometimes connecting
five to ten
together. They hired transporters to carry the
liquor to their markets, and even used night-vision
goggles!
According
to New York
Times reporter Peter Kilborn, the 130-proof
alcohol (200 proof means 100 percent alcohol) was
produced for about $3 a gallon, and bottled in
six-packs of plastic gallon jugs. They were then
sold for $10 - $12 a gallon in the backrooms of bars
– sometimes known as “nip joints” or “shot
houses” – in major mid-Atlantic cities such as Richmond, Philadelphia,
Washington
and Baltimore. Consumers would pay $1 a shot, much less than for
legal whiskey. Since the federal excise tax on a
gallon of whiskey in the late 1990s was $13.50, the
ATF estimated a loss of $19.6 million in tax revenue
between 1992 and 1999.
In
2003, Virginia’s 276 state-operated liquor stores sold three
million cases of distilled liquors. Along with
Virginia
wines and assorted mixers, this generated gross
sales of $439 million. That doesn’t include
restaurant and offsite licenses. Tax revenue from
all sources of liquor sales returned $203 million to
the Commonwealth last year.
According
to Virginia
Places, a Web site maintained by Charlie Grymes,
a Geography of Virginia instructor at George Mason
University in Fairfax, illicit distilleries, a.k.a.
“stills,” evolved in the mountainous regions of
Virginia and other southern states because
converting surplus corn into liquor created a
product that was easier and cheaper to transport.
The farmers could make a profit, as long as taxes
weren’t too high.
The
moonshine distilling process works this way: “The
first step in making moonshine is fermenting a
mixture of rye, sugar, corn, yeast or other
ingredients in ‘mash’ kegs. The mixture is then
distilled in cooker kegs by heating the liquid and
collecting the alcohol vapor through a network of
copper tubes into a ‘thumper’ keg.” Today,
illicit stills can be found dug into the sides of
hills or in houses, garages or secret basements.
One
problem with drinking stuff made in somebody’s
basement is that it can cause lead poisoning. A 2003
study revealed that more than half of the illicit
liquor confiscated by Virginia
law enforcement officers over a five-year period had
lead levels above the Environmental Protection
Agency’s water guidelines. The study was reported
in an October 19, 2003
Washington
Post
article on research done by Christopher Holstege,
who directs the Division of Medical Toxicology at
the
Blue Ridge
Poison
Center
and is a professor of emergency medicine at the
University
of
Virginia Health System.
Holstege
found that the lead originated from the solder in
old car radiators that are often used as condensers
in stills. Moonshine drinkers know they need to get
the lead out, and think they can tell whether or not
they have a bad batch by shaking a jar of it. If a
head of foam appears, that means the batch has lead.
Health officials don’t exactly endorse moonshiners’
lead-detection methods.
Making
moonshine seems to be a tradition that refuses to
die, however, and illicit liquor manufacturing may
even be spilling north. Last October, Virginia ABC
agents discovered a suburban still made from a
lobster pot, plastic tubing and some C-clamps in Fairfax
County. The operating apparatus was in a shed on wooded
property, not far from a suburban shopping mall.
Making moonshine in Virginia, however, is still a Class 6 felony – punishable
by up to five years in jail.
Illegal
or not, Franklin County embraces its hooch heritage
by proclaiming itself the “Moonshine Capital of
the World” and its Chamber of Commerce even
considered a moonshine museum that would produce
legal boutique liquor. In nearby Pittsylvania
County, organizers are planning the 6th
Annual Moonshiners Jamboree for next August .
The
area does have a few holdouts, however, who can’t
quite get into the – yes – “spirits” of
things. The
New York Times reported that one resident
stated: “It would be nicer if it was in the past
and we could say we used
to be the moonshine capital of the world.”
NEXT
UP: Is
Virginia All Wet, Or What Exactly Is a Run?
--
March 1, 2004
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