- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(bluegrass music) - [Narrator] White lightning, mountain dew, corn liquor or moonshine, no matter what you call it, this crystal clear liquid flows like water through America's history.

- Distilled spirits, as we know 'em, came with the Europeans when they came.

And so this was a big part of life and culture.

- [Narrator] While it's a big part of the culture, the nation's relationship with alcohol is a little complicated.

A common source of income for farmers, liquor production was once as common on an American farm as apple pie until Uncle Sam wanted his slice - In the strict sense of the word, it's not moonshine until it's illegal.

- [Narrator] In North Carolina, Wilkes County garnered quite the reputation for making moonshine.

It's around the '50s that we got dubbed the moonshine capital.

I think at that time we were generating somewhere from, like, 2 to $3 million in revenue of the illegal moonshine trade.

- [Narrator] Here in the county, it isn't hard to find someone with a moonshine story.

- When I asked my dad what that hole was, and he said, "That's where your grandpa had a illegal still."

- [Narrator] Today, however, there's new opportunities to cash in by making spirits in North Carolina, legally, of course, - It's, you know, my grandpa's recipes.

It's nothing really new learnin' it's just, you know, doin' it on a bigger scale.

- [Narrator] Coming up, meet the folks at Call Family Distillery, taking more than a century of family knowledge of distilling and building out a successful moonshine business.

Then deep dive into America's sometimes tumultuous relationship with alcohol and see how prohibition and taxation resulted in the creation of stock car racing.

And meet a Hickory bar owner who's sharing his passion for fine whiskey.

All that and more on this episode of "Trail of History."

(upbeat music) (southern rock music) Downtown Wilkesboro, tucked away in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The town draws you in with its historic charm, murals and classic Main Street buildings.

But at one time, Wilkesboro, and all of Wilkes County for that matter, were known for something else... - [Brian] This is the moonshine capital of the world in a certain time period.

- [Narrator] just a few miles from downtown.

- [Brian] Over here in the stainless barrel, you see the mash fermentation.

- [Narrator] What Brian Call and his son Austin are doing today is perfectly legal.

- This process, it starts out real sweet when we cook the cornmeal and grain in, and towards the end of fermentation, it ends up kind of a sour taste to it.

All that activities when you pitch the yeast, that's the yeast eating up the sugar molecules and converting it into alcohol.

- [Narrator] They're following an age-old family recipe.

- I always ask Dad why we do sour mash whiskey?

And he said, "Well, that's the way we've been doin' it for generations."

And the basic for moonshine, like my dad and grandpa.

Number one, they wanted to get the most yield outta their product.

So they'd use sugar, corn meal, yeast, wheat or rye, whichever one they could get their hands on at the time.

And three to four days fermenting in your fermentation tanks.

Then you'll pump it over in the still.

Around 172 degrees, your alcohol vapor start coming off.

Ours is kind of unique.

We got a thumper, then a homemade condenser.

- [Narrator] Once condensed, and depending on the mash recipe, the flowing crystal clear alcohol ends up as moonshine or whiskey.

- Every still's different.

But our still in about two hours, we can make around 180 gallons of whiskey or moonshine.

You know, you gotta have all grain to make whiskey.

You can't use no sugar in it, and it's gotta be barrel aged.

Goin' back to moonshine, you can run the moonshine.

You can put fruit in it like this, make apple pie or sell it clear.

You know, you don't have to age it or nothin'.

- [Narrator] Everything at the distillery centers around family.

- With my son would be eight generations, So, kind of started with a Lutheran minister over in Tennessee, and he ended up having a legal distillery.

It's called the Daniel and Call Distillery District Four Number Seven.

He was a Lutheran minister, and the temperance movement come through.

And there's a lady, Angelica.

The story goes preachin' at his church, and she looked right at him and said, "You're goin' to go to hell if you keep making this whiskey."

So he ended up selling out to Jack Daniels and choosing the Lord's work.

And some of the family members kept on in the whiskey business on the illegal side.

Here we are today in full circle makin' legal moonshine and whiskey again.

- [Narrator] During the era of Prohibition, a few members of the Call family found themselves on the other side of the law.

- Grandpa, he was in the liquor business in a big way.

Him and Junior Johnson's dad, you know, they made shine together, and grandpa ended up goin' to prison.

- [Narrator] With his grandfather away in prison, Brian's father, Clay, stepped up at a young age to help provide for the family.

- His Uncle Howard was haulin' whiskey, and he started ridin' with him, helpin' him unload the product around 13-year-old.

And the story goes, my dad, he started haulin' around 14 and 15 year old.

- [Narrator] Their products pay homage to the previous generations of distillers in the Call family, starting with the Uncatchable, a well-earned nickname given by some in law enforcement to Brian's late father, Clay.

- That's our 101 clear moonshine.

And that's the proof that my dad, all the moonshiners kept it around 100 proof.

That's original recipe.

- [Narrator] Then there's the whiskey named for the Reverend Daniel Call.

- The Reverend Daniel Call.

This is a four-year-old whiskey we done.

It's aged in new white oak barrels.

And we filter it through sugar maple.

- [Narrator] The seventh and eighth generation distillers, the Calls, along with their ancestors, are intertwined in America's long tradition of making distilled spirits.

- [Eden] People like the Germans and the Scot and Irish settlers that came over, whiskey making was already a big part of their culture before they immigrated.

- It was a priest in Jamestown that discovered that you could distill corn.

And so that became kind of a natural thing, you know, although there are all kinds of things to still.

Peaches and apples and plums, and if you could could get it to ferment, you know, they were gonna distill it.

The main was corn liquor.

And so that was, you know, what most farmers were making.

There was even an exchange rate in most stores for a gallon of liquor is worth this much.

It's a pretty stable thing - [Narrator] In 1791, and saddled with Revolutionary War debt, President George Washington and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton looked for a revenue stream to pay off the war.

Their solution?

A tax on domestically-produced distilled spirits.

As you might imagine, in a nation famous for the Boston Tea Party, this new tax didn't go over so well.

In 1794, a group in Pennsylvania fought back, literally, resulting in an armed conflict called the Whiskey Rebellion.

The whiskey tax only lasted about a decade, thanks to the nation's third president.

- One of Jefferson's chief planks in his campaign was the repeal of the excise tax on liquor, which happened.

And so from Jefferson up to the Civil War, it's perfectly legal.

(musket blasts) In 1862, Congress passes a bill in the midst of the Civil War to raise revenue for the war effort, and they put an excise tax on liquor.

You know, as kind of a wartime measure.

You know, well, that excise tax has never gone away.

It's still there.

- [Narrator] With the federal tax on distilled spirits firmly in place, America's relationship with them starts to get a little interesting.

- In the strict sense of the word, it's not moonshine until it's illegal.

Prior to the Civil War, it's perfectly legal, and it took a few years.

The federal government didn't wanna push things too far because of fears of relaunching hostilities, but they began enforcing in the late 1860s.

- [Narrator] History professor and author of the book "Tar Heel Lightnin'," Daniel Pierce says once North Carolina was a major liquor producer, and after the Civil War, legal production continued as long as the tax was paid.

But the post-war economy in the state was struggling.

The added federal tax created a financial hardship on many small farmers who relied on whiskey production to make ends meet.

The whiskey tax turned them into well-meaning outlaws.

- "I'm gonna pay the tax.

That's not really feasible because it's just gonna wipe out anything I can make off of this, and I need the money."

Particularly after the war.

- [Narrator] In a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, struggling farmers often made moonshine just to make enough money to pay the property tax on their farms.

- North Carolina, it's a long, long economic recovery from the Civil War.

And even, you know, when you get into the 20, you know, agriculture, just the profits from agriculture were just going down, down, down.

People who didn't want to go into mills and, you know, and didn't wanna move north or, you know, wanted to stay on their land, pay their taxes.

I mean, one of the big ironies is that what a lot of people were doing was evading a tax so that they could pay a tax.

- [Narrator] But the law was the law.

- The federal government tried really hard to crack down on the illegal production.

If you're a relatively small producer, for the most part, you could probably get away with it.

But the government, particularly in the 1870s, they really began cracking down.

And they launched what were known as the Moonshine Wars.

During this we had a good bit of violence.

But by and large, what they did was just drive it all underground, you know.

People didn't quit makin' it.

- [Narrator] Taxation, however, wasn't the only threat to producers and the consumers.

By the end of the 19th century, the temperance movement was gaining ground.

- There are a lot of other factors that are going on here.

And a big factor is the fact that particularly evangelical groups, particularly Baptist and Methodist, latched onto this growing national movement towards temperance, which is not prohibition, but it's, you know, we wanna eliminate saloons.

We wanna, you know, eliminate drunkenness.

We wanna eliminate, tied a lot of it to, like, child abuse and spousal abuse and stuff like this.

- [Narrator] Advocates for the temperance movement found allies in both business and political circles around North Carolina.

- This is the period when the textile mills were growing.

Textile mill owners did not want their workers drinking.

And so a lot of them very much jumped into this movement and pushed it.

- [Narrator] On the political side... - There is a definite racial component.

In North Carolina in the 1890s, the Democratic Party, they had lost their majorities in the legislature.

They had lost the governorship to the Republicans and the populace who had joined together.

And so they were looking for how to get back in power.

And so they launched a huge white supremacy campaign in 1898.

- [Narrator] The Democrats' campaign worked.

But to stay in power, they would need support from temperance supporters.

- So, the Democratic Party was very sensitive to any sort of threat to their power.

Well, as the temperance movement grew, they began putting more and more pressure on the Democratic Party to join in.

And they threatened to launch a third party.

I think a lot of elite people knew that they could vote for prohibition.

This would keep alcohol outta the hands of African Americans.

They would keep it outta the hands of poor people.

They would keep it outta the hands of mill workers, people that they did not want drinking.

But they were gonna find a way to get it.

- [Narrator] So in 1908... - The referendum passes in 1908 overwhelmingly in North Carolina.

In fact, North Carolina, it's not the first state to have prohibition, statewide prohibition, but it is the first to do so by referendum.

- [Narrator] And in 1909... - January 1st, 1909, North Carolina becomes a dry state.

So this is 11 years before national prohibition.

You know, it's like North Carolina is saved, and it's this glorious day, and we're just gonna go on to greater and greater things because we have now, you know, ended the threat and the evil of alcohol.

The language of prohibition was so far over the top.

I mean, it's just like every evil in the world was associated with alcohol.

- [Narrator] At the federal level.

It was the start of the roaring '20s when the 18th Amendment went into effect prohibiting the manufacture or sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.

Nationwide, liquor and beer flowed into the streets as law enforcement destroyed inventories.

Supporters of the North Carolina law and the 18th Amendment saw it as a moral victory.

- But Pierce says... - The people who really won the lottery when prohibition hit were the moonshiners because what prohibition did was just to eliminate any legal production in North Carolina.

So now they had a monopoly on the market, you know.

You could only get it from someone who was producing it illegally.

The illegal manufacturing becomes much larger scale.

They're using bigger stills.

They change the basic recipe, which it was pretty simple.

One of the things that's really interesting is really looking at how much of a role women played in this business, and particularly in that whole issue of the speakeasies of the liquor houses, particularly if they were widows or women whose husbands had abandoned them, and they had small children.

You know, it was kind of the social welfare system.

- [Narrator] Nationally, prohibition was a failure.

Crime rates soared, and the federal government lost millions in tax revenue.

In December of 1933, the ratification of the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, once again, making alcohol legal.

But here in North Carolina and places like Wilkes County, not much changed.

- It's a very long, slow death in North Carolina.

It's when national prohibition ends, North Carolina continues with local option.

And so most of the state remained dry.

You know, they did put the ABC system in place, but most of North Carolina remained dry at some level or another.

- For the residents of Wilkes County coming out of both prohibition and the depression, making moonshine meant survival.

- Like the rural Appalachian, like, live off the land type of culture here.

There's the stereotype of, like, the bummy moonshiner, bootlegger guy, and he's dumb and wears his overalls, and he just wants to be a vagabond or something just for the sake of it.

But really it was just a way for people to make ends meet.

You know, you could make a whole lot more money for your family turning your corn crop into liquor than you could just going and selling it at the market.

- [Narrator] And moonshiners weren't the only ones benefiting from illegal moonshine.

- There are all kinds of other people that are attached.

The store owners and, you know, communities just become enmeshed in this.

One of the things I talked about in my book was the connection between, particularly, rural churches and moonshiners.

And there are all kinds of accounts of people donating the proceeds from their liquor making to build a church or to paint the church or to pay the pastor or whatever, you know.

So pastors kind of, you know, had to walk a fine line there, you know, with this, you know, particularly in rural areas.

And the towns, they're all in on prohibition.

But in rural areas, they're little, you know, they had to watch themselves.

- [Narrator] Back in downtown Wilkesboro, the old Wilkes County Courthouse, the same courthouse many moonshiners faced judgment, now houses the Wilkes Heritage Museum.

Eden Hamby, with the museum, says by the 1950s, Wilkes County had earned a reputation.

- It's around the '50s that we got dubbed the moonshine capital.

I think at that time we were generating somewhere from, like, 2 to $3 million in revenue of the illegal moonshine trade.

Pretty much everywhere, it was going around the communities.

It was, you know, travelin' from holler to holler.

It was going to, like, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, all those types of places.

- [Narrator] The Wilkes Heritage Museum contains several exhibits related to the county's moonshining legacy.

At the Call Family Distillery, the family displays their vast collection of artifacts as well.

Brian Call says avoiding the law required creativity and stealth.

- My grandpa era, they'd take, like, a mule and these wooden sleds and haul supplies back in the woods, and then when they'd haul 'em out, they had these big cans, these wooden jacketed cans you see behind me here, there on the floor.

And they was metal.

So these guys, they made a lot of noise, so they put wood around them, you know, where the mule was hauling them back out, it wouldn't make no racket.

My dad used to tell me stories that if you had to still up a month, you was doin' good back in them days 'cause you know, this moonshine capital of the world, they had 30 or 40 agents out here looking for, you know, you had to take a lot of water to make moonshine and they'd get out and walk these creeks and stuff.

- [Narrator] Of course, not everyone in Wilkes County made illegal liquor.

- My dad used to bust the stills up pretty good.

He was in sheriff's department in the '50s with Fred Meyers, bunch of those guys.

He tore 'em up, blew 'em up, dynamite and stuff.

He was in law enforcement mostly all his life.

I was a little kid at home, and here comes a low boy trailer to the house.

It has a complete still on it.

The boxes were still hot.

And I said, "Dad, didn't y'all blow this one up?"

"No," he said.

We're takin' this somewhere."

I know where it went.

It went in the chicken house somewhere.

(laughing) - [Narrator] Brian Call's longtime friend, Keith Huffman, says in the small community, local law enforcement and the moonshiners never really had any ill will towards each other.

They just each had a job to do.

- Goin' back to Dad and Junior, you know, Dad was on the law enforcement side.

Junior was on the liquor-makin' side, and you know, they were still friends.

(engine rumbling) - [Narrator] Now for the more romanticized part of the legal moonshine, the cars built for speed, like this black '66 Dodge Coronet.

(engine rumbling) Brian's late father once used it for transporting his valuable but illegal cargo.

But Brian says his father's favorite car... - So the '61 New Yorker was his favorite car.

It's baby blue, looks more like a business coupe.

But my dad, he'd put a sports coat on and a Stetson hat, and they thought he was somebody of importance, like a judge or lawyer, but he'd have a trunk load of hooch in the back.

- Son Brian says his dad's main rule when hauling moonshine... - He wouldn't ever run on a Friday or Saturday night 'cause there's a lot of people on the road for the weekends.

He'd start hauling on a Sunday night, you know, and he'd haul a Wednesday or Thursday.

But for the weekends he was always worried, you know, running fast like that, they might run over somebody.

- [Narrator] With so many souped-up cars running around, it was inevitable bravado would kick in.

- When they weren't racing the police, you know, a lot of times, like, you know how men are, they wanna prove that theirs is the fastest or whatever.

So they would race each other, and then that slowly got more organized until they founded Nascar.

- Clay Call was a lifelong friend of racing legend Junior Johnson.

- Him and Junior Johnson become best friends haulin' shine.

And I always asked Dad, I said, "Why in the hell didn't you ever get into racin'" He said, "There wasn't no money in it."

He stuck to the, you know, moonshine business, and Junior went on racin'.

- [Narrator] Over in Hickory... - [Greg] All right man, I got a couple things for you to try today.

- [Narrator] At the Hickory Social House Bootleggers Whiskey Bar, owner Matt Miller and distributor rep Greg Blackburn are sampling some of the newer whiskeys.

- These are from Aristotle Spirits, which is in Garner, North Carolina.

- [Narrator] The barrel-aged distilled spirit's popularity is seeing renewed interest.

- Whiskey across the nation.

We really see whiskey everywhere.

And in North Carolina, we've had a huge boom here lately of whiskey buyers and whiskey groups and all these people who are seeking out the different bottles that exist.

Very much a collector's thing.

There are people who have multiple bottles in their collection, of all kinds of different things.

I myself have a pretty extensive collection.

And just enjoy the comraderie that comes with it.

Just being able to get with other people that enjoy the same hobby and try different bottles, exchange things and just share with each other.

- [Narrator] Miller enjoys sharing his love for the caramel-colored beverage.

- You know, it's a lot of different things.

I think there's the parallel with, you know, people enjoyin' a pipe or a cigar, that complex flavor, you know, something to sip on.

That's not just drinking for the sake of the alcohol, but drinking for the sake of the flavor.

I'll pick out what I want to drink, and I'll just go, "What flavor profile am I looking for in a whiskey today?

Do I want somethin' light?

Do I want somethin' heavy?

Do I want somethin' spicy?

Do I want somethin' mellow?"

- [Narrator] The collection at his whiskey bar has something for just about every taste.

- Over the years, collected quite a bit.

I think we're right about 200 different whiskeys and moonshines today.

Always looking for the unicorn to add to the collection and sell to the public, so.

It's a fun hobby.

- [Narrator] Over 100 years ago, legal distilleries were prevalent across North Carolina, but prohibition laws killed most of them off.

And because of the aging process, making whiskey requires a sizable investment of time and money.

- [Matt] That's why so few distilleries are doin' it, - [Narrator] But slowly, North Carolina-made products are on the rise.

- North Carolina's catchin' up, and that's been really exciting.

I'm excited, you know, for the future of it.

I know we have a lot of beer tourism, you know, especially up in the Asheville area, the breweries.

I think the micro distilleries are gonna continue to grow.

It's just common sense, really, economically, to support local.

You know, the money stays in the community.

It reinvigorates the community.

And then you get to have your little hometown hero.

(country blues music) - [Narrator] Back in Wilkesboro, making sure the Call Family Distillery catches this new wave of interest in both moonshine and whiskey means a lot of work.

But Austin Call sees it as opportunity.

- There's more to it that meets the eye, learning the distribution part of it and pushin' liquor, learnin' the alcohol industry in itself, it's a lot to take in.

All it is is tellin' a story, and I feel like that's what marketing pretty much is, is, you know, pushing a product, pushin' an idea of pushing history.

It's easy for me to, you know, explain to people.

Like, I'll be givin' tours and stuff, and they'll ask me a bunch of questions.

and I know all the answers to 'em because I've been in this my whole life.

- [Narrator] The distillery started production in 2014.

Brian says running it is all hands on deck.

- We had a sayin', one Call does it all, but I figured, you know, my wife, takes care of the taxes, and Austin does social media.

I do most of the distillin', and we just all work as a team.

- [Narrator] Besides their signature products, the Call Family Distillery continues to evolve, including the addition of a restaurant and an outdoor stage.

- I was layin' in bed one night.

Me and my wife was tryin' to figure out an angle to get people to the distillery.

We thought about music, so made the Mash House stage, and we bring in big acts like (indistinct).

Bloodlines been here, Aaron Tippin, Little Texas, just a lot of national acts, and it's just made a big boom in our business, gettin' the name out - [Narrator] For the family, the pride in what they've built is as clear as their moonshine.

- I'm just proud to be, you know, a part of this and a part of this family and the history that we have when it comes to making moonshine and whiskey and everything else.

- It's excitin' just to be able to work side-by-side with your son.

Some days are rough, you know, workin' with family.

But we have our little differences.

We always make sure everything's good when we leave here.

I just want to get it built up enough where Austin can take over and keep the tradition rollin'.

- When I come in here, I'm doing five jobs at once.

So it's a learning experience all around when it comes to that.

But when it comes to distilling and stuff, this is something I've always done.

You know, this is something that's been bred into me for the most part, and I have a good time doin' it.

- It means the world to me, just keepin' the heritage alive here in Wilkes County 'cause, you know, the revenuers dubbed this as the moonshine capital of the world in a certain time period.

And my grandpa and dad and everybody involved in the business, Just thankful that I can carry on the tradition a legal way and don't have to be looking over my shoulder and worried about goin' to prison.

- All around the world, you'll find distilled spirits, everything from Irish whiskey, Kentucky bourbon, Mexican tequila or Wilkes County moonshine.

Each unique in flavor and cultural identity.

Today, the Call family plays an important part in reviving the state's once vibrant distilling industry by embracing their family's moonshine heritage.

Over in Catawba County, the Hickory Social House and Bootleggers Whiskey Bar do their part by providing a venue to showcase North Carolina-made whiskey and moonshine.

The Old North State has an undeniable cultural, economic and political connection to distilling.

Thank you for watching this episode of "Trail of History."

(upbeat country music) (dramatic music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.