Poor Time magazine. How they struggle to maintain a shred of relevancy in today’s fast-paced, crazy, Googley world.
I’m pretty sure ‘Shine has been “having a moment” for generations now.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I don’t care how many crafty hipsters they interview for this and similar articles; don’t purchase illegal spirits from distillers under the age of 35 because there’s a good chance they don’t know what they’re doing. Granted, I don’t have any first hand experience with this stuff, but I’ve heard from reliable sources (southern shine runners) that cooking up White Dog can be like cooking up meth. Both can blow up in your face and singe your eyebrows and genitals and other delicate parts of your personage and taste acrid and horrible. No, it’s probably safer to source Shine from grizzled old coots who live in the hollow and who learned their craft from their daddies and their daddies before them, and someone in the family should have a Nascar connection (before it became “NASCAR”) or at least a pet ferret.
Then you know the shine is probably safe to drink AND will taste like Peach Kool-Aid….in a good way.
All original content © 2012 by Jessie Knadler
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You forgot the most important rule… make sure to SEE the moonshiner in question quaff his brew before YOU do – and don’t drink anything if someone on the porch is giggling and pointing towards you.
Or do what I do – just find the grizzled old mountain coot RELATED to you, and thereby rightfully terrified by what his own momma will do to him if you get sick and get your shine from him.
By the way? Love the site and congrats on the cookbook. Gonna lose a few days wandering through your site. Luckily, it’s raining and I have some time!
Hi Jenna: Good idea, except that most careful distillers, like careful pot growers, don’t fraternize with customers. They operate through their runners. If the runner takes a tipple in your presence, then you know the brew is probably safe.
ha! hillarious!
You know you can actually get brain damage from bad hootch as my grandpa used to call it.