VER THE SUMMER I was passing through an anonymous hamlet in the Hudson Valley, and I met this fellow, whose name I no longer recall. Matt or Mac or something. He had this little red barn in his backyard, and it contained, he later revealed, a handsome copper apparatus for the manufacture of whiskey. I asked if I might see it in action. He said sure, but then we got distracted by drinking stuff other than whiskey, and night fell, and by the time we thought of it again it seemed unlikely that we’d be able to track down a propane tank.
[Mysterious stranger: Mark something or other?]
See, it was like 2 o’clock in the morning by then. But we were still more or less steady on our feet, so we decided to take a stroll to the corner gas station and see if they would sell a tank of highly flammable liquid to two guys with crossed eyes. They would. I can’t remember exactly what happened next, but before long I was drinking clear, hot happiness from the mysterious stranger’s still.
[It looked like this, but it was fresh and hot.]
I was reminded of that night when I came across this great little article in The Atlantic about a “hipster moonshiner” named “Max Watman”:
Read the whole thing here. It’s uncanny how much “Max Watman” looks like the moonshiner I chanced to meet—if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was the same guy. Oh well. My memory’s not what it used to be.One of the priciest spirits I’ve ever tasted was a clear whiskey poured from a green 12-ounce Sierra Mist bottle. Max Watman, who held the bottle like a Parisian sommelier, told me it cost about $120—roughly what he’d paid in drinks and meals to people who introduced him to other people up the Virginia moonshine supply chain as he went about procuring it. He poured us each an ounce or so into elegant tasting glasses. We sipped. Watman made a face that was not the face of someone having an especially good time. He described it as “bile with some simple syrup.” In my tasting notes, I wrote: “musty,” “rancid,” “Alpo.”