By Carla Burgess, July 2011
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Joe Michalek will never forget his first taste of moonshine. He was at a blues jam session in Pinnacle, Stokes County, in the skirts of Pilot Mountain, when someone passed him a glass jar. He took a nervous swig but was relieved. What he thought would be awful was smooth and delicious, with a peachy sweetness. At his next meeting with a mystery jar, Michalek was braver. This time the drink tasted of strawberries, but it had the same clean finish.
The native New Yorker had stumbled onto a regional liquid delicacy. Folks have been illegally making and running moonshine in western North Carolina for as far back as most of them can remember. Their daddy made it. Their granddaddy made it. Their great-granddaddy made it. Farmers grew corn and turned it into white lightning. This enterprise reaped much greater profits than the sale of the grain outright. If people owned up and paid taxes on their moonshine, there would have been little money left to support their families.
Michalek was smitten and fast became a student of all-things-moonshine — the history, the culture, the lore and legend. Before he knew it, friends were vouching for him with the local whiskey makers and Michalek gained entry to an exclusive club, the moonshiners’ inner circle. These craftsmen freely shared their liquor and their family stories. “I thought, why isn’t anybody selling this legally so that everyone could find it, not just the ones that know somebody?” Michalek began distilling a notion. What if he could make moonshine on the up and up?
He started doing his homework and discovered a dormant North Carolina liquor-manufacturing license held by two men who’d had, but abandoned, a similar idea. He followed the paper trail to an abandoned train depot in Madison, Rockingham County, not 20 minutes from his house. Inside were wasps, birds and a dusty copper still that had produced only one sad run — a 19-gallon batch of scuppernong brandy — before the owners had to turn to other obligations. Michalek snatched up the property and prepared to get his distillery up and running. With license in hand, he started turning out what old-timers called “government moonshine,” a nickname for the whiskey that gave the authorities a piece of the action.
Michalek’s original recipe was inspired by one of his favorite illicit drinks, “apple pie,” corn liquor flavored with apple juice or cider. His concoction has a complex flavor — both sweet and spicy. Some consumers say they detect vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and citrus notes, but Michalek guards his recipe just like his friends in the underground do. In 2005, the first batches of “Carolina Catdaddy” made their way to the central distribution warehouse of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission and on to ABC stores across North Carolina.
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