Moonshine Exhibit

May 9, 2007

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, there is a new exhibit at the Blueridge Institute highlighting the history of moonshine.

Blue Ridge Institute’s ‘White Liquor’ exhibit

Moonshining, it turns out, is a subject of endless fascination for people not only from the state’s uplands, but from flatland cities such as Richmond and Norfolk and from around the nation. The moonshining exhibit’s popularity — admission is free, so there are no attendance figures — has prompted Moore to extend it through February, though it was supposed to close this spring.

“We’ve never had as many visitors who come in and look around and say they’ve never been in here before,” Moore says.

The exhibit, composed of various whiskey stills, jars, jugs, copper material, moonshining paraphernalia and plenty of photographs of local moonshiners at work, has been 30 years in the making. Moore has been collecting pieces and interviewing bootleggers that long, hoping to one day highlight the area’s rich history of distilling, both legal and illegal.

There is also an excellent slideshow.