PARROTTSVILLE, Tenn. — This is a story about a man named Marvin Sutton and how he proved that the road from criminality to commodity is sometimes shorter than it looks.

Until his death in 2009 at the age of 62, Mr. Sutton, known as Popcorn, was a moonshiner. He was not quite the last, as he often claimed, but he was probably the most famous ever to work out of Cocke County, which long had a claim as the nation’s moonshining capital.

It may yet again. As of last Thursday, microdistilleries are legal in Cocke County for the first time. And at the head of the line is a distillery making Mr. Sutton’s recipe.

Nestled in the rocky embrace of the Great Smoky Mountains, Cocke County was a moonshine center for as long as anyone here can recall.