Popcorn Sutton XXX Moonshine

[cleanshaved]

Light weights. It meant to be drunk/drank straight.

After distilling it comes out between 140 to 170 proof. Then they cut it with water to the desired level.

Happy to be a light weigh now. My days of drinking to get hammered are well and truly over.

When I was younger I flatted with a couple of guys in the liquor industry. One was a manager at a bottle store and the other a worker there. When the bottle store worker left, he was replaced with a sales rep from a wholesale liquor supplier.
We named the flat CLT-209 The CLT was both the first initials of our names but also known as "Combined Liquor Team" - 209 was the address. Mate, could they drink but they said I drank more than them and I didn't even work in the industry......I can't recall drinking that much myself.

 

[The Count of Merkur Cristo]

Saw this online today...interesting story.

But when I think about moonshine...Gator Mcklusky always comes to mind;

"Meet the Man That Made Moonshine Famous: Tennessee's Popcorn Sutton"

Story by The Smokies News - 14 Feb 24

"Obscured by the brightly lit neon tourist attractions surrounding the now-popular mass market moonshine distilleries you'll find throughout the Southeast, there is a deeper truth. It's a truth about the mountains that I’ve called home for the better part of the last 35 years. It’s a truth we don’t market to tourists or even much talk about amongst ourselves. A truth that many of us have forgotten and maybe some of us never knew.

Those lush green mountains – the ones whose sharp edges have been blunted over the long eons of time – they still can cut you if you don’t respect them. Especially in the places where the asphalt turns to gravel and then dust. Those were the places that belonged to the Popcorn Sutton. The places where there ain’t nobody selling pancakes but you can get your hands on a damn good jar of, as he called it, "likker".

Who was Popcorn Sutton

Before there was a legend, there was Marvin. Marvin was born in Maggie Valley, North Carolina in 1946. He spent most of his life running the mountain roads between his hometown and Cocke County, just across the state line. Marvin was the self-proclaimed descendant of a long line of moonshiners. He considered running moonshine his heritage, a part of his legacy.

"Popcorn" got his nickname after using a pool cue to a broken popcorn vending machine".

Marvin himself was at least a little bit like those mountains of his youth, a force of nature. He earned his nickname when he took a pool cue to a bar’s broken popcorn vending machine. He continued his passion for making the "best damn likker" he could even after a handful of run-ins with the law.

We know Popcorn Sutton was not built to operate within the confines of modern society and really not even into the society into which he was born. He just didn’t give a tinker’s damn about what anyone – especially the federal government – thought about how he should live his life. Popcorn was of the mountains. He sprang from a region long ignored by the leaders in Nashville or Washington. A region forgotten except as a matter of national curiosity, a living breathing zoo populated by those whom “society” viewed as backwoods or backwards.

Popcorn was either unwilling or incapable of living the way outsiders – or the law – expected him to. He was a living, breathing Waylon Jennings song. He was a brazenly profane man with a long scraggly beard who was rarely caught without his “overhauls” and signature hat – complete with “coon pecker bone” adornments. Popcorn had a high, reedy voice and bony fingers. He could be hard when he had to, you don’t make a living selling illegal likker by being soft.

But he was also an artist. A man whose life’s work was the perfection of moonshine, the life’s work of his family for generations. The cliché is he marched to his own drummer, but it was more than that. Popcorn was sharper than most. He was a puppet who masterfully manipulated both his strings and yours. He showed the outside world only the parts of himself he wanted them to see, the parts they expected him to play – iconoclast, mountain man and rebel – and it only made him – and his brand – stronger".

What happened to Popcorn Sutton

From a certain point of view, Popcorn died the way he lived, by his own hand. Popcorn got busted again – this time amongst a large effort to “clean up” Cocke County. Around the same time, the federal government conducted a large raid into illicit cockfighting and drug rings as well as chop shop operations for which Cocke County had long been infamous. Around the same time, some people in Cocke County law enforcement were snared for either looking the other way, participating in various illegal operations, or even running them.

This time Popcorn wasn’t facing a slap on the wrist. The law – specifically Judge Ronnie Greer – was tired of looking the other way. Popcorn was sentenced to 18 months in prison – real prison. He was 62 and facing various health conditions. In 2009, a few days before he was to report, he was found dead in his beloved green Ford Fairlane. The engine was running. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning".

Read More: Tennessee's Popcorn Sutton

[Moonshine:] “Hell, ain’t nuthin’ no Goddamned harder".[...]. Popcorn Sutton

 

[The Count of Merkur Cristo]

"Gentlemen, this is a story that you will tell your grandchildren...and mightily bored they'll be" [...]. General Horrocks, British 10th Corps

The last time I ever had some of the 'real stuff' was with a Army friend from Puerto Rico 'eons' ago at then Fort Hood, TX (now Fort Cavazos), and he somehow brought back some hooch from home.

Taken as 'shots'...it was 'Smooth as Silk' and if you weren't careful...you're just as likely to find yourself on the floor (which I did without shame).

[...] "No no no no, I don't drink it no more. I'm tired of wakin' up on the floor. No, thank you, please, it only makes me sneeze and then it makes it hard to find the door". Ringo Starr

 

[The Count of Merkur Cristo]

View attachment 1797004 "Gentlemen, this is a story that you will tell your grandchildren...and mightily bored they'll be" [...]. General Horrocks, British 30th (XXX), Corps ["A Bridge to Far"...1977

]. [...]

... correction in red & additional text in blue above.

"Well...between [Cognac] and nothin', I suppose I'd take [Cognac]. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find". William Faulklner

 

[Ankerwycke]

General Horrocks taking the salute.