Tennessee Shine Company Reveals New Moonshine History Tour
Tennessee Shine Company is one of the newer moonshine companies to come to the Smoky Mountains. They first opened their doors in Wears Valley less than 10 years ago, but they are expanding quickly. At the newest location in Sevierville, you’ll find their moonshine and other liquors, as well as a moonshine history tour. Learn all about the new moonshine history tour at the Sevierville location of Tennessee Shine Company below:
About the Tour
When Tennessee Shine Company planned on expanding their stores to another location, they wanted their moonshine tour to be memorable. It was important to them that their distillery stood out, so they came up with the idea to create a tour dedicated to the history of moonshine in the Smoky Mountains over the last 100 years. The entire location is 11,000 square feet with 5,000 square feet dedicated to the tour. Red Utley and Mike Cockrell (from Discovery’s show Moonshiners) helped create the tour to ensure it is accurate and rooted in history.
What’s Along the Tour
The moonshine history tour at Tennessee Shine Company starts with a look at where people who distilled moonshine in the beginning lived. There is an old replica of a cabin porch and half of a real moonshine truck. In the bed of the truck, you’ll find a real moonshine still. The truck bed has a trapdoor where bootleggers would store moonshine to transport it. This will be a place where guests can take pictures if they want.
The next stop is a room where you’ll get to see real tools used to get corn ready to be made into moonshine. Some of the equipment you’ll see and learn about includes a scale, grinder, and a milling machine. There’s even a real motor that ran the milling machine back in the day. Then, you’ll learn about the main ingredients in any batch of moonshine.
You’ll also get to learn about the original distilling process back when bootleggers would hide their stills in the forests of the Smokies. There will be replicas of stills, as well as a giant fake black bear that will occasionally growl at people. This represents some of the dangers of distilling in the woods, because the bears would smell the fruit and become curious, which was dangerous for the people making moonshine.
A small movie theater in the next room plays films about 3 to 5 minutes long about the history of moonshine and its role in the last few hundred years in the area. You’ll also find an interactive TV portion of the tour called Distilling Disasters where you can choose something that could have gone wrong during distilling back in the day and the consequences of that. Some examples are if the still exploded or if you mixed it wrong.
One of the last stops along the tour has a real Nascar Daytona 500 car decked out with the Tennessee Shine Company logo. You’ll learn more about their roll with the driver and Nascar.
After the Moonshine History Tour
Once you’ve made your way through the tour, you’ll be able to head back into the retail space of the building. There are four tasting stations set up where you can try all different flavors of moonshine and other drinks. You can also look through all kinds of merchandise and bring some home with you!
You’ll definitely want to check out Tennessee Shine Company’s moonshine history tour when you’re in town. Want to know what else you can do? Look at these other attractions in the Smoky Mountains for some ideas!
