America’s first moonshine, applejack, making a return in a sleeker style
MORAVIAN FALLS, N.C . — On the drive up Brushy Mountain through high pine woods, the GPS guidance peters out quickly.
“Take a left at the ‘Road Closed Ahead’ sign” is the first of many twists and turns that John Holman texts to visitors to his distillery, here at the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The bridge to the property was washed away by Tropical Storm Eta last November, and the pandemic has discouraged the customers who normally visit to buy his high-proof “waters of life,” also known as aquavit, vodka and schnapps.
But Holman still shimmers with energy and pride in his pet project: applejack.
Holman Distillery is one of several new producers, here and in other apple-rich regions, that are reviving this quintessentially American drink — the original moonshine of the colonies — from the death blow it was dealt a century ago by Prohibition.
Holman, 49, is unusual in making applejack in the traditional way, but like other craft distillers, he is nudging it to line up with modern tastes, barrel-aging it to give it the smooth, sippable patina of fine brandy, and tinkering with single-varietal batches to bring out the flavor of heirloom fruit.
Just as long-aged American spirits like Pappy Van Winkle bourbon and Michter’s rye have become as desirable as French Cognacs and single-malt Scotch whiskies, the new apple brandies have heritage and flavor enough to build a devoted following.
Applejack was traditionally produced from the hard cider that was the everyday drink for most Americans in the 18th century. Naturally fermented and low in alcohol, hard cider was safer than well water, cheaper than beer and easy to make at home.
In this cool, fertile Appalachian region, as in most of the Northeast, apples were then far more plentiful than the grains needed to make whiskey. Up to and through the Prohibition era, there were countless producers making and (illegally) selling applejack in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where roads were limited and trees provided thick cover from government agents.
Local Wilkes County bootleggers like Junior Johnson, the Thomas brothers and the Flock family famously became the first generation of NASCAR drivers in the 1940s and ’50s, and many of the sport’s first speedways, along with its Hall of Fame, are within 100 miles of here.
The original applejack, which many historians believe was invented by American colonists, was produced by a low-tech method called “jacking.” Jacked spirits are distilled not by the usual method of boiling, but by freezing, and any household with a supply of hard cider and cold weather could make applejack.
With each freeze, the water in the cider crystallizes into slushy ice. Each time the ice is skimmed off, the concentration of alcohol grows, until what is left in the barrel reaches about 40 proof. That clear spirit is applejack — not as strong as modern distilled spirits like vodka, but strong enough to last the winter.
Holman’s jacking method is a guarded secret, but he is far from the only craft distiller experimenting with applejack (and its aged version, apple brandy) in this region, where apples have long been a staple crop.
Virginia and the Carolinas are as far south as most apple varieties can grow; they need a certain number of cold nights each year to flourish. It’s the land of dried apple hand pies, apple stack cakes, apple cider vinegar and applejack — all ways to preserve fall’s fruit for eating and drinking through the winter.
The original applejack was probably cloudy, with bits of peel, bees, leaves and whatever else stumbled in over the course of the winter. The new versions of applejack — from producers like Catoctin Creek, Holman Distillery and Copper & Kings — range from clear, high-proof eau de vie de pomme, to deep auburn liquors often called aged applejack, or apple brandy. (As far as federal labeling goes, applejack and apple brandy are one and the same.)
The local craft-cocktail crowd has already embraced the new apple brandies in classics like the Jack Rose, the Widow’s Kiss and old-fashioned. Creative bartenders like Drew Furlough, of District 42 restaurant in nearby Asheville, are building new drinks around them, like the Wright Flyer, a variation on the Paper Plane. “The local food ideas around here have worked their way into my blood,” he said.
As microcideries open on farms, in cities and within microbreweries, hard cider and applejack are developing a stronger infrastructure, producers say. But distilleries that make high-proof spirits remain heavily regulated at both the federal and state level.
Scott and Becky Harris opened Catoctin Creek in Purcellville, Virginia., in 2009, as part of what Scott Harris described as a “midlife crisis” in which they left jobs and cities behind to enter a field that neither knew the first thing about. Becky Harris, 53, is a chemical engineer who had most recently worked on developing microscopically thin polymers for contact lenses.
Whiskeys are their main product, brewed from grains including corn, rye and wheat. But delicate, fragrant fruit brandies, including Quarter Branch apple brandy, are Becky Harris’ passion.
Like most modern makers of applejack, she uses a complex steam distilling process, describing it in terms opposite to the jacking method. Instead of removing the water from the cider, she says, the art is in removing the alcohol — with its fruitiness intact. “The fats and esters and other flavor chemicals should ride along with the alcohol,” she said. “You have to taste and smell it at every step along the way.”
As most small-scale applejack makers do, Catoctin Creek starts the process not with fresh apples but with hard cider, which it procures from Blue Bee Cider company, in Richmond, Virginia, in the kind of collaboration often found among craft producers. The Harrises send some of the finished brandy back to Blue Bee, where it is mixed with the cidery’s own fortified apple wine and ginger eau de vie into a spicy dessert cider called Firecracker.
This year’s batch is made from Winesap, Pippin, Arkansas Black and other heritage apple breeds that are good for brandy, she said, because they have almost no sweetness, but share a strong, concentrated apple taste that carries all the way through distillation. The kind of big, sweet apples that have been bred for eating, like Red and Golden Delicious, are far too sugary and watery. “You want a lot of flavor for the flesh that’s there,” she said.
After distillation, Scott Harris, 50. takes over the barrel-aging process that gives Quarter Branch its amber color and deep flavor, a method based on traditional Calvados, the apple brandy unique to the Normandy region of northwest France. He prefers white oak from Minnesota; other producers are using charred bourbon barrels from Tennessee, discarded sherry casks from Spain and even peaty Scottish whisky casks, rotating the spirit among them to produce the notes of aged leather and young green apple, caramel and vanilla that make apple brandy naturally fragrant, sweet and delicious.