Short Mountain Distillery has completed construction on Stillhouse #1, and is still on track to turn out some old-fashioned Tennessee moonshine soon.
“It’s a game of hurry-up-and-wait right now,” distillery representative John Whittemore told the Review last week. “We have all the equipment ordered for the still, and are waiting for it to start coming in so we can get to work.”
The staff at the distillery is also waiting to harvest a gorgeous stand of organically grown corn that was planted on the property last spring.
“We haven’t harvested yet,” Whittemore said, “We’re waiting for the corn to dry, and because of the old-fashioned methods we used to plant, plowing with mules and that sort of thing, it took a little longer to get it in the ground.
“It looks fantastic,” he said, “Anyone who has come out and looked at it who knows anything about field corn has said that it is one nice stand of corn. We hope some of the local farmers will look at what we are doing here and get into growing organically themselves. We will need outside suppliers when we get things up and running.”
The distillery will offer tours in a mule-drawn wagon beginning in March 2012, when the facility will officially open to the public.
The events will consist of a tour of the distillery grounds, including the stillhouse, where the product will be made, and the “Shiner Shack,” which will house an authentic working moonshine still that has actually been (ahem) “in use in Cannon County in the past.”
“We will take people on a guided tour of the still house and the ‘Shiner Shack,’and give them an overview of the product, but a bigger part of the tour will be to show them how tied with agriculture this product is,” Whittemore explained.
“We are growing organically here as a sustainable practice,” he continued, “We are about to be certified USDA organic, and we hope to eventually have a brand that will be labeled ‘USDA Certified Corn Whiskey.’”
Plans are for the facility to be fully operational by spring.