Art News

Distillery to Make South Carolina’s First Legal Moonshine; will Include a Museum

CHARLESTON (REUTERS).- Two entrepreneurs are taking advantage of South Carolina’s new micro-distillery laws to make traditional moonshine whiskey legally in the state for the first time. The Dark Corner Distillery will open next month in Greenville, where engineer Joe Fenten and longtime home beer brewer Richard Wenger will produce and sell small batches of 100-proof moonshine from a custom-made copper still. The distillery, housed in a 1925 building, will also include a tasting bar and a museum dedicated to the history of the Dark Corner, the local mountains that were once full of moonshiners, feud and mayhem, Fenten, 27, told Reuters. The area was settled, along with the nearby Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, by Scots, Irish and Welsh who migrated down through the Appalachian mountain chain from Pennsylvania in the 1700s. “They thought it was their inalienable