moonshine

Moonshine (often corn liquor from a still) was a prime source of income for many in the southern Appalachian mountains. Its history partly derives from Scots/Irish immigrants to the United States who settled in the region, and brought with them the recipe for a popular drink called uisce beatha or uisge beatha – a phrase that literally means “water of life.” The practice of making moonshine was illegal during the Prohibition years of the 1920s, but continued to flourish in part thanks to distillers hiding their stills in underground caverns (for example, in the Great Smoky Mountains they used the Forbidden Caverns in Sevierville, Tennessee).

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