Due to popular demand, White Liquor, Blue Ridge Style, an exhibition at Ferrum College’s Blue Ridge Institute and Museum, will stay open through February of 2008.

    The exhibit showcases the real nature of illegal distilling in the southern Virginia mountains, a folk tradition that went far beyond the mountains thanks to industrialization, traditional know-how, hard work, and lots of illegal activities.

    “This is the most comprehensive exhibit that’s ever been done on moonshine in the country.” Said Roddy Moore, Director of the Blue Ridge Institute & Museum. “We’ve never had anything this popular at our museum … so we decided to keep it open for an additional 11 months.” National Geographic Magazine’s film crew has already documented the exhibit and used parts of it in their current documentary on moonshine.

    White Liquor, Blue Ridge Style explores over a century of moonshining traditions in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Distilling know-how came into the region with the first English, Scots-Irish, and German settlers. Locally made alcohol was a common part of the foodways of the Blue Ridge. Apples were crushed, and the juice was distilled into brandy or fermented into hard cider. Grains were distilled into hard liquor or brewed into a “beer” or malt drink.

    The United States government briefly taxed alcohol in the late 1700s and early 1800s, but following the Civil War an alcohol tax became permanent. Scores of local Blue Ridge distilleries were licensed. With the railroads expanding and roads improving, the Blue Ridge distillers’ customers became the coal miners of West Virginia and factory workers in Southside Virginia and North Carolina. By the late 1800s, Franklin County, Virginia, alone had over 70 legal distilleries and an untold number of illegal moonshine operations. The twentieth century witnessed the death of the legal distilleries (due to Prohibition), the subsequent flourishing of illegal stills, conspiracies involving Blue Ridge politicians, the moonshiner’s adaptation of larger stills and new technologies, the shift from brandy and grain alcohol to so-called “sugar liquor,” a market expansion to large urban centers such as Philadelphia, an increase in legitimate job opportunities for people who might otherwise have gone into moonshining, and the transformation of the moonshiner into a regional folk hero.

    White Liquor, Blue Ridge Style tells its story through displays of actual stills, dozens of photographs, still makers’ tools, video interviews with retired moonshiners and federal agents, and a host of other documents and memorabilia. “In certain rural communities moonshining became a major economic driver. The era of subsistence farming was coming to an end, and jobs were scarce unless you were willing to move to a factory town or a coal-mining region. Moonshining provided a cash income for still hands and liquor haulers, and they spent that money at local businesses,” said Moore.
“Today the number of people involved in moonshining appears to be just a small fraction of the number running stills in the 1940s and ‘50s. The old-timers usually bemoan the decline of moonshining. The skills of making smooth corn liquor or apple brandy are all but gone. Today’s moonshiner deals in quantity rather than quality, and he typically makes a harsh-tasting, sugar-based liquor sold in unlicensed, big-city nip joints for a quick high.”

    White Liquor, Blue Ridge Style is funded by a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities & Public Policy. A gallery guide with essays is scheduled for publication this summer, and the annual Blue Ridge Folklife Festival (October 27, 2007) will feature a moonshiners’ storytelling stage. Plans are being made for the exhibition to travel around Virginia.

    White Liquor, Blue Ridge Style runs through February of 2008. Located on the campus of Ferrum College, the Blue Ridge Institute & Museum is open Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., year-round; and Sundays, 1 to 4:30 p.m., mid-May through mid-August. For more information call 540-365-4416 or visit www.blueridgeinstiute.org.

    Ferrum College is a four-year, private, co-educational, liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Ferrum offers a choice of nationally recognized bachelor’s degree programs at a cost well below the national average for private colleges. For more information on Ferrum, visit www.ferrum.edu.