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Moonshine•DawsonvilleMoonshineDistillery Today, visitors can tour the distillery
DISTILLERY free and see what it takes to make corn
whiskey, known as moonshine or “white
In the “Moonshine Distillery, a name that refers to Wood’s lightning.” Visitors have come from as
Capital of the World,” grandfather, distiller Simmie Free, to the far away as Wyoming and Montana,
visitors can now idea that moonshine distillers historically Germany and New Zealand.
legally see how the spirit have been free spirits, and that the end The Dawsonville Moonshine
is made at a distillery product is fine, handcrafted spirits. Wood Distillery’s primary product,
located in the same says of her family history of making
building as Dawsonville moonshine, “It’s been in my blood,” “Dawsonville Moonshine Georgia
City Hall. and she was passionate about “taking a Corn Whiskey,” is hand crafted in
family business and making it legal.” small batches. The distillers make
Opened in October She pitched the idea to Dawsonville their own malt out of heirloom
2012, the Dawsonville city officials who helped her get the corn grown locally, disdaining
required approvals and the location in the genetically modified corn that
Moonshine Distillery the municipal complex.
is so widely available. The Dawsonville
uses traditional recipes product is 100% Georgia Grown.
This special attention to quality over
that are more than 150 quantity is attracting the attention of
connoisseurs of handcrafted fine spirits.
years old and have been passed down In fact, the spirit recently won a national
silver medal from the Beverage Tasting
to owner Cheryl Wood. Wood said that Institute, which describes the spirit on
Tastings.com as “Clear. Grainy aromas
in her previous career as a manager of roasted corn husk and bread with
hints of dried apple, nut and clay with a
with AT&T, she would go to occasional silky, dry-yet-fruity medium body and a
nuanced finish with notes of flowers and
meetings where the icebreaker would pears. Tasty and expressive.”
Wood addresses the quality of the
be to share something unique about spirit this way: “If it’s not good enough
for us to drink, it’s not going out.”
herself, so her go-to response was that The Dawsonville Moonshine
Distillery’s location inside the
her grandfather made moonshine. The Dawsonville Municipal Complex puts
it immediately adjacent to the Georgia
excited interest her story generated in Racing Hall of Fame, which is historically
appropriate. During the Prohibition era,
those meetings got her to thinking, “Why moonshine runners used souped-up
fast cars to get their liquor to Atlanta
can’t we just do this legally?” buyers without getting caught by the law.
Some of the early moonshine runners
In 2007, she founded Free Spirits later raced their cars for sport. This sport
eventually gave birth to today’s NASCAR.
15 Dawson County Chamber of Commerce • 706-265-6278 • www.dawson.org
