History | Dark Corner Distillery

HISTORY OF DARK CORNER

“MOONSHINE” in its “white lightnin’” state was sometimes mixed with herbs, spices or fruits and used medicinally. For serious medicinal uses, however, the “white lightnin’” was placed in charred oak kegs or barrels and buried for months to age. This “chartering” of the “moonshine” produced a smooth, potent beverage of a red-brown hue, similar to legal bourbon whiskey.

Glassy Mountain Township—the northeastern corner of Greenville County’s Appalachian hills—is the nucleus of the area that has been known as Dark Corner for over 175 years. Its first settlers did not come north out of Charleston or Savannah. Instead, these Celts (Scots, Irish, Cornish, Welsh) left the lowlands of Scotland, Ulster in Northern Ireland and borderline England to immigrate to the Pennsylvania colony in America.

They arrived at Philadelphia and Chester, pushed west, then turned south through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and piedmont areas of the Carolinas as part of Pennsylvania’s Great Wagon Road migration. Many found the hills of upper Greenville District, one marked by a glassy-looking rock-face and another shaped like a giant hog’s back, to their liking. They put down roots.

These Celtic descendants brought with them the ancient Celts’ knowledge of distilling grains to make “the water of life,” which was viewed as a divine creation due to its curative powers and economic value. The making and selling of whiskey was virtually the only way many families could get hold of actual money in a barter society.

A few settlers made whiskey for the government. Many continued to have homemade distilleries using a Native American grain—corn.

After the Civil War, a Federal excise tax was levied against private distilleries. Dark Corner settlers began placing their distilleries in woods far from roadways and conducting distilling operations at night so that smoke would not be visible to revenuers searching for illegal sites. Thus, “moonshine” became the name for homemade whiskey.

These fiercely independent, Celtic descendants stubbornly refused to pay a governmental tax on the homemade whiskey because they believed in their heart of hearts that it was their God-given, inalienable right to make it.

Aging of the “chartered” whiskey not only gave a better flavor but mixed extremely well with native herbs, such as sassafras, ginseng, blood root, chamomile, tulip tree bark, wild cherry bark and yellow root, or spices, such as ginger, cloves, allspice, cinnamon and lemon or orange peel, to produce potent bitters, spring or fall tonics and internal body cleansings.

To determine if buried “MOONSHINE” in charred barrels was aging properly, “moonshiners” used sections of the Joe Pye Weed, which grows completely hollow inside, as “quills” to lower into the buried barrels for test sipping.

Medicinal “Moonshine”

Glassy Mountain Township—the northeastern corner of Greenville County’s Appalachian hills—is the nucleus of the area that has been known as DARK CORNER for over 175 years. Its first settlers did not come north out of Charleston or Savannah. Instead, these Celts (Scots, Irish, Cornish, Welsh) left the lowlands of Scotland, Ulster in Northern Ireland and borderline England to immigrate to the Pennsylvania colony in America.

They arrived at Philadelphia and Chester, pushed west, then turned south through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and piedmont areas of the Carolinas as part of Pennsylvania’s Great Wagon Road migration. Many found the hills of upper Greenville District, one marked by a glassy-looking rock-face and another shaped like a giant hog’s back, to their liking. They put down roots.

These Celtic descendants brought with them the ancient Celts’ knowledge of distilling grains to make “the water of life,” which was viewed as a divine creation due to its curative powers and economic value. The making and selling of whiskey was virtually the only way many families could get hold of actual money in a barter society.

A few settlers made whiskey for the government. Many continued to have homemade distilleries using a Native American grain—corn.

After the Civil War, a Federal excise tax was levied against private distilleries. DARK CORNER settlers began placing their distilleries in woods far from roadways and conducting distilling operations at night so that smoke would not be visible to revenuers searching for illegal sites. Thus, “MOONSHINE” became the name for homemade whiskey.

These fiercely independent, Celtic descendants stubbornly refused to pay a governmental tax on the homemade whiskey because they believed in their heart of hearts that it was their God-given, inalienable right to make it.

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