Moonshine video
Video by Dean Hoffmeyer, 2006

Home grown hooch is always best, just not always legal.

Using an age old family recipe however, Chuck “Moonshine” Miller, of Belmont Farms, has produced a jail-free corn whiskey made in small batches in a copper pot still.

He calls it Virginia Lighting (real moonshine), and the cowboy hat wearing booze master took his fight to Virginia lawmakers in order to draft legislation that would get his grand pappy’s concoction in the hands of mainstream tipplers.

With the mighty moonshine, sometimes known as “mooney” or “creek water,” brought back to the masses, Miller and his mustache have quickly become celebrities and hometown heroes throughout the Old Dominion state.

“I make it fresh,” insists Miller, “when I get it down to Richmond it’s still warm.”

With a southern twang, Miller emphasizes, “Moonshine is traditionally drunk fresh…it has a little bit of zip to it that way.”

Twenty years after jumping through federal and state hoops, this moonshine guru is finally receiving notoriety, with National Geographic, PBS, and the History Channel all infiltrating his whiskey farm in recent years.

Housed in a defunct Pentecostal church, Miller greets reporters and drunkards alike, as if they were long lost cousins. Taking guests under his wing, the happy go lucky distiller guides newbies through the history of moonshine with ease.

“The definition of Moonshine really depends on who you ask…the federal government would tell you that it’s whiskey without any tax paid on it…but really corn whiskey all started in Jamestown 400 years ago when the Europeans had the technology and the Indians had the corn.”

In between the history of the ‘shine, Miller laces in fun factoids, and chatters about how his family’s recipe moved from out of the mason jar and into a licensed product found today on the shelves of ABC stores.

“I had been farming for a long time, and of course it’s hard to make money on a farm…so we tried to make money from grapes for wine,” recalls Miller. “Then I thought—my grandfather used to make corn whiskey years ago, why not get the old family recipe out and get it going again.”

To obtain proper approval however, Miller had to have much more than just a recipe that was once made only at night deep in the woods—he had to have a real still.

Working with his newfound friends at the fed, the distiller in the making issued a challenge—“I told ‘em, you guys are always blowing them up, you have to know where one is.”

With some help, Miller finally unearthed an abandoned still, one originally made in 1933, the year Prohibition ended officially. Equipped with a hard earned ABC license to sell his elixir onsite at the distillery, Miller is now enjoying an outpouring of tours and thirsty patrons.

“I’m the only one doing it in Virginia, and as far as I know the only one in the US,” he says before rushing off to tend to his next batch of the ‘shine.

www.virginiamoonshine.com