Moonshine Is Growing in the U.S., and Big Whiskey Wants a Taste

Via WiscoDave

For decades, most people had never even seen a jar of moonshine, let alone  tasted it. These days, you can find it at stores and restaurants around the  country thanks to loosened liquor laws and changing consumer preferences. Even  the industry’s biggest distilleries are experimenting with moonshine.

Moonshine has been distilled in backwoods Appalachia since the 1800s. By its  most traditional definition, the term means “illegal spirit,” and many families  in that historically independent-minded, libertarian-leaning area of the U.S.  made a living off making it — partly because the liquor could be produced and  sold quickly, as it didn’t require years of aging in barrels. (That, by the  way, is also what gives the hooch its oftentimes harsh character.) Today,  moonshine is generally used as a catchall term for unaged white whiskeys, many  of which are made in Tennessee and North  Carolina.

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