Customer Reviews

Mountain Spirits: A Chronicle of Corn Whiskey from King James' Ulster Plantation to America's Appalachians and the Moonshine Life

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An artful mix of verbatim quotes and scholarly research, you cheer when Thomas Jefferson lifts the excise tax, and you are saddened by the corruption that Prohibition unleashed. Above all you admire the integrity and the intense vitality of the colorful moonshiners, and wish they had been your friends. I hope that, somewhere, in some hidden valley, on some sheltered branch of a river, there's somebody out there tonight keeping the art and craft of "corn likker" alive.

Thank you, Mr. Dabney, for a wonderful book.

This book gives the basics of making moonshine, not for instruction (though there is enough to get started), but as practical background for understanding the history and life of home whiskey makers. This is no "dry" history, rather it focuses on the more colorful aspects and characters of the craft. Relates how both government greed and criminal corruption helped destroy what had been a lawful legacy of rural American culture.

The people of Scotland and Ireland have long been known for their whiskey (whisky if you are a Scot). Is it any wonder then that the southern Appalachians which are heavily populated by people of Scottish and Irish ancestry became America's "likker" capitol? Tracing the origin of moonshine from it's European roots and concluding with today's corporate like operations, Joseph Dabney has done a remarkable job of gathering the history of white lightning.

Dabney has conducted countless interviews with old time moonshiners and their arch nemesis the revenue agents. Both groups seem to have opened up to the author and the tales they tell are a historical treasure. Moonshiners tell of their recipes and secrets, almost to the point of making this a blueprint for an aspiring distiller. These men and women were proud of their product and despite the stereotypes, making whiskey is hard work. The retired agents also took great pride in their work and were proud of the friendly relations they had had with the still operators. Often, when these agents caught someone working at his still the agent just told them to go on home and be at the courthouse at a certain time. Only on rare occasions did the moonshine maker fail to show.

There is a lot of good humor to be found in this book also. One tripper, the person who hauled the product to town, which I have always called a runner, told how he avoided the gaze of any policeman. If he found a law officer looking at him, the runner would pick his nose. He figured nobody was going to watch a man pick his nose and it seemed to work. An agent told of a drunk staggering into town asking for him. The agent found the man and he told the agent he wanted to report a still. It took the agent a while to figure out the directions the drunk was giving him but he finally got it straight and the next morning he and some deputies raided the still. Guess who was running the still, it was the drunk who had reported it and he didn't even remember talking to the agent. It turned out that the drunk and his two partners in the moonshine business had had a falling out and this partner got drunk and went to town to report the still so his partners would get arrested. He forgot about doing it and his partners got wind of his actions. They stayed home and the drunk got arrested.

For me, many of these stories are as familiar and comfortable as an old recliner because I live in the heart of moonshine country. Still, I think even a born and bred New Yorker will find this book a delight. Well written and researched, it is a model of oral history gathering. Dabney is never preachy nor does he look down on the people he is writing about. He does however, decry the current sad state of the whiskey makers craft. The old craftsmen are gone and today moonshine is made mostly with sugar and with very little corn. It is also often made in rigs containing lead and has dangerous additives put in it. To quote one old timer that Dabney interviewed, "It'd kill a dead snake."

The moonshiners who plied their trade in the Southern highlands 75 years ago would no doubt be shocked today to learn of the industrial scale distilleries making "corn likker" throughout the countryside in Iowa and neighboring states. They would be even more shocked to learn that the Federal government is a generous partner in the process rather than an armed adversary.

Times change, and Joseph Earl Dabney does a fine job of documenting centuries' worth of change in the world of DIY alcohol distillation in the mountain regions of the southern U.S. These regions originally were settled by the so-called "Scotch-Irish," who brought their whiskey-making talents along with their independent spirit when they came to these shores in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Mountain Spirits is 35 years old and its age shows in certain stylistic ways, but it also means that when Dabney wrote it he was still able to capture many first-person accounts of the moonshining life, from the operators who made the hooch to the runners who brought it to the cities to the "revenuers" who pursued both. And the first-person accounts are first-rate. What a cast of characters!

Dabney reminds us that, except for Prohibition, illegal distillation was all about taxes. Making spirits was perfectly legal as long as the taxes were paid. He also reminds us that for many residents of remote mountain valleys there were few other realistic ways of earning a living. Finally, he reminds us that this was not romantic work, but rather nonstop back-breaking labor involving long days and the constant risk of capture.

The only romantic jobs were those of the "runners," whose souped-up cars were legendary for taking mountain roads at high speeds and leading the revenuers on many a chase. This culture of speed, incidentally, was one of the key forerunners to what is today known as NASCAR.

I recommend this book. It does a great job of illuminating a fascinating corner of American culture.

Good history of moonshiners. Starts with the process of making moonshine. Historicly it begins with the the roots in the British Isles and the beginnings of the American governments never ending campaign against self suffincency in the whiskey rebellion. The author profiles many colorful characters, some were long dead and gone and some were old timers who were still living that he spent time with and collected their many entertaining stories. For all the negative things you could say about moonshine itself the old timers had a rebellious and stubborn self sufficent side that is both admirable and interesting.

This was written in the 1970's and even then it was a dying way of life. The hard nosed self sufficent hillbilly types were for the most part being replaced by criminal syndicates who produced a lower quality of moonshine fit only to drink by hardened alcoholics. Being from Kentucky originally I have been offered and tried "white lightning" a few times and the authors desription was accurate, goes down like a drink of water and maybe 5-10 seconds later it takes your breath away. Really moonshine has no similarity to good Scottish whiskey as far as I'm concerned.

Faults are the author gives all credit to the "Scotch-Irish" but some of the most colorful characters featured had Welsh surnames (Morgan/Davis/Owens), also when he talked about the whiskey rebellion he didn't bring up that Hamilton (probably also a Jew himself) was wrapped up with Jewish booze distillers in the states and the Carribean who did not want people producing their own drink. Of course Hamilton got what he deserved in the end thanks to Aaron Burr. Overall this is an interesting look into a piece of real worthwhile Americana