Who Makes Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey? And Why Call it "Wild?"

As I recall, a bumper sticker on Popcorn Sutton's truck read Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Keep that in mind when talking about one of American moonshine's most prolific self-promoters.

Here's the deal with moonshine stories; there are more lies, falsehoods, deceptions, poorly understood half-truths, bluster, bravado, misquotes, and corrupted second-hand information than at a West Virginia Liars Contest. Many of these untruths are willful misdirection, but most — maybe even the majority— of them are simple misunderstandings, innocent of malice.

I think that's what landed on my desk yesterday morning.

Ever since the Discovery Channel began broadcasting its new series Moonshiners last month, the Whiskey Forge would get frequent spikes for searches about late moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton. Even before that, he often showed up in the site traffic reports, but this was more than the usual pings here and there. Yesterday, surfers from across the US and Canada were digging into earlier stories about Sutton.

What gives? He's been dead for some time now. Why the sudden interest? Turns out Huffington Post ran a story about him and the new 93-proof white whiskey crafted on his persona and the moonshine he made. Also turns out that Huffington Post doesn't have an ear for Southern accents. The article includes a video in which Sutton's widow Pam talks a bit about the whiskey. It quotes her as saying:

“We have a distillery set up in Nashville, Tennessee. We can’t legally call it moonshine. We have to call it Tennessee Wild Whiskey, and also Popcorn’s liquor is the first white whiskey that the federal government has approved.”

Well, a few clarifications are in order. Mrs. Sutton doesn't call it "Tennessee Wild Whiskey" in the video. What she says is "Tennessee White Whiskey." If you hear talk or read of a new "wild" whiskey, double check that source.

Sutton's white whiskey, however, it not the first approved by the federal government. Just last Fall, Whiskey Advocate magazine ran Lew Bryson's reviews of more than a dozen unaged or minimally aged white whiskeys. There are plenty of such spirits out there and plenty more on the way.

The brand's website is here, but as of today, it's just a parking page. The distillery Pam Sutton mentions isn't one of Popcorn's old rigs in which he cranked out thousands upon thousands of gallons of untaxed liquor. "Nashville" was the giveaway. Popcorn operated in and around Maggie Valley, North Carolina, about midpoint between Asheville and Gatlinburg. No, Nashville and commercial white whiskey mean one thing to me and one thing only: this particular grain spirit got its (legal) start at DSP TN-15006, our good friends at Corsair Artisan Distillery, makers of some really lovely spirits.

Darek Bell of Corsair tells me Jamey Grosser originally used Corsair stills to make Sutton's whiskey, but just secured his own Distilled Spirits Plant permit. The TTB confirms it: Popcorn Sutton Distilling, LLC of Nashville, Tennessee has its DSP*. The day to day operations guy is distiller Travis Hixon, formerly brewer at Nashville's Blackstone Brewery.

Congratulations, boys, on getting your own place set up. Any chance we'll be seeing some legal versions of Popcorn's brandies?

*Edit 1/10/12 I had originally written that DSP TN-S-15009 was assigned to Popcorn Sutton Distilling, LLC, but Christian Grantham of Short Mountain Distillery corrected the record: HIS Tennessee distillery is TN-S-15009. I can only sympathize with distillers and the endless reams of paperwork they have to endure to get a legal distillery up and running. 

Goes well with:

• Legal Moonshine? You've Been Conned, a bit I wrote this summer about the flawed concept of so-called "legal moonshine."
• One of Corsair's standout whiskeys is the triple smoke American single malt. Attendees of last year's Tales of the Cocktail session on New American distilleries got to sample some, but if you missed out on that, do try tracking some down. 
• Moonshiners runs on the Discovery Channel on Wednesdays. Last week's marathon of it is what made me late for a New Year's Eve party. I happen to like the show, even if—as are all "reality" shows—it is so clearly a product of artifice. Viz Popcorn's bumper sticker supra.
• The West Virginia Liars Contest has been going on for decades. I've never been, but would love to make it one day. 

Felony, She Wrote

Sutton, who favored a long, unkempt beard and overalls,
typified the American moonshiner. Devoted to his hobby
and fiercely opposed to the law that prohibits it,
Sutton produced high-proof spirits at home.

~ Eric Arnold

If Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton was a hobbyist distiller, then I'm Angela Lansbury. This week forbes.com published Eric Arnold's short piece Moonshine: More than a Hobby. It seems that Arnold's heart is in the right place, but he didn't quite get his head around the concept. Starting off with the recently-deceased Popcorn Sutton was a clue that yet another article was about to flub the home distilling story.

Sutton, who seemingly killed himself this Spring, was indeed a moonshiner, but for him moonshine was a business. Max Watman, writing for Gourmet, says that when Sutton was busted by authorities (again), his three stills each had a capacity of 1,000 gallons. That's not a hobby. Joe Blow or Jane Smith making a gallon of brandy or whiskey at a time for family and friends—that's a hobby.

Both moonshining and home distilling draw on long traditions of folk distilling—and both are fine by me. But let's keep our terms straight. Sutton got busted because he was making massive amounts of illegal liquor and flaunting his activities through a book, interviews, and even an Emmy-nominated documentary by filmmaker Neal Hutcheson. Trying to sell nearly 850 gallons of shine to authorities just isn't on the same scale as trading baseball cards. That's a capitalist venture of a shrewd self-marketer.


Goes well with:

• Max Watman's book, Chasing the White Dog, will feature more Popcorn stories—as true as one can get with Sutton, I imagine. It's scheduled for a 2010 release and I, for one, can't wait. Subtitled An Amateur Outlaw's Adventures in Moonshine, Watman does indeed look into the business end of making illicit liquor—which is solidly where Sutton's story belongs.
• Paul Clarke, writing in Imbibe, gets the hobbyist distilling story right. His 2009 article New Moon Rising is one of the more articulate and accurate portrayals of what's going on in home distilling these days. That is, it jives most consistently with what I've been seeing develop over the last 20 years.
• Renee Davidson's piece Whiskey Geeks Keep Moonshine Tradition Alive for wired.com was one of the first modern articles that set aside outdated notions about mountaineer moonshiners and concentrated on what was really happening in the field.
  

Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton Dead at 61

Farming, gardening & making moonshine is a dieing [sic] art.
I hope Popcorn taught someone the fine art of making moonshine.
We needed him, now who will take his place?

~outlawrider
WBIR comments

According to Knoxville, Tennessee's WBIR, moonshiner Popcorn Sutton was found dead in his home today. The 61-year old distiller had been recently sentenced to 18 months of prison for distilling spirits without a license and, as a felon, carrying a firearm. Looks like Popcorn will take a pass on doing the time.

Sutton was the author of Me & My Likker (good luck finding a copy) and the subject of Neal Hutcheson's film, The Last Damn Liquor Run I'll Ever Make. According to Knoxnews.com, federal agents last year seized "three stills with 1,000-gallon capacities, hundreds of gallons of moonshine-making ingredients such as mash, more than 850 gallons of finished product, guns and ammunition."

I wrote about his arrest at the time and posted two videos featuring the bearded and be-overalled moutaineer. You can check them out here.

Popcorn, the secret of your, ahem, "apple brandy" is safe with me.

.