Five Fun Facts About Moonshine

By Richard Thomas

Moonshine has an almost mythological quality to it. The liquor’s illicit mystique is so embedded in American culture that it’s the stuff of films, songs and television, but surprisingly few Americans (and even fewer foreigners) have ever had a sip of the stuff. The rise of legal moonshine has exposed more people to the juice itself, but actual ‘shiners and bootleggers remain the stuff of fiction or reality TV for most. These five facts should help make moonshining a little more real:

1. NASCAR is the house that moonshine built: Outside of the sport’s hardcore fan base, it’s sometimes merely rumored and not widely known as a fact that stock car racing was born out of moonshining and bootlegging. Although principal NASCAR founder Bill France was not involved in that illicit industry, many of his early partners and drivers were, people like Raymond Parks, Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall and Red Byron. These men developed their driving skills behind the wheels of V-8 hot rods while ducking the law, and raced each other on red clay dirt tracks in North Georgia and upcountry North Carolina for years before France spearheaded organizing them into a professional sports organization. Want to know more? Pick up a copy of Driving With The Devil by Neal Thompson.

2. What Does “XXX” Mean? Aside from of its later adult film connotations, XXX is synonymous with rocket fuel-grade liquor, and for good reason. Each “X” was a mark on the side of the jug indicated a run through the still. After three such runs, XXX moonshine was very high octane stuff, often the kind of thing you could run your car on.

3. The word “moonshine” predates the United States: The origins of the word “moonshine” in referring to illegal booze is found in Merry Olde England, and is usually dated to the 17th Century, sometimes even the 16th Century. Then as now, the government was very keen on generating revenue by taxing alcohol. The liquor bootleggers were sneaking into England wasn’t whiskey in those days. More often than not it was rum or brandy, and they were avoiding the revenue men by ship rather than by car. Most of this work was done at night, by moonlight, so the product became known as “moonshine” and the bootleggers as “moonrakers.” The former word stuck in the American parlance. The latter became the title of an Ian Fleming novel, and from there a bad Roger Moore Bone flick.

4. Moonshine has a great big bunch of names: One of those synonyms is now the name of a popular soft-drink, Mountain Dew, but white lightning is probably the best known of the alternate names. Another synonym, hooch, has come to more often refer to liquor in general. Others include corn in a jar, blue john, bush whiskey and donkey punch. One of my personal favorites was popular during the Civil War era and is very descriptive: popskull.

5. Even if home distilling is a “thing,” it’s still illegal: Thanks to reality TV and the surge of interest in whiskey in general, home distilling has become a thriving fad. A quick search will reveal plenty of companies selling small, functional stills clearly intended for home use, some of them small enough to operate on the stovetop.

The companies selling these units can get away with it because you can use a still to purify water or extract plant oils, even if the company itself is suggestively named “Hillbilly Mountain XXX Stills.” Distilling alcohol without a license is also legal in some states. However, proper licensing is required everywhere in the U.S. under Federal law, and most states require their own licensing as well. If you don’t have that paperwork, making your own whiskey at home is illegal, even if you never sell a single drop of it.