In recent years, the New Straitsville Moonshine Festival has lacked one important ingredient: tasteable moonshine.

In recent years, the New Straitsville Moonshine Festival has lacked one important ingredient: tasteable moonshine.

Visitors to the festival, held every Memorial Day weekend to celebrate the area�s Prohibition-era moonshining heritage, could see a demonstration still but couldn�t taste the product.

As someone who occasionally enjoys a wee nip of corn whiskey, I view that as a significant shortcoming. Years and years ago, old-timers often, well, overlooked the regulations requiring that the festival�s demonstration product be poured down the drain.

But we live in a meddlesome, bureaucratic age, and those more relaxed days live only in golden, corn-whiskey-colored memories.

Perhaps not coincidentally, festival attendance has fallen in recent years, said Doug Nutter, a volunteer who has helped operate the festival�s demonstration still and whose great-grandfather once made illegal whiskey in the nearby hills.

But Nutter and some partners hope to put a new shine on the festival.

They recently received the necessary licenses to open a craft distillery, just across the street from the festival grounds. And, using the recipe of Nutter�s ancestor, the distillery will soon produce legally drinkable corn whiskey, to be called Straitsville Special Moonshine, just in time for this year�s festival.

Technically, the product pouring forth from the Straitsville Special Distillery won�t be moonshine � which, by definition, is illegal. But call it white dog, white lightning or just good ol� corn whiskey; it�ll taste like it did back in the day, Nutter promised.

And back in the day, that taste was famous. Prohibition-era patrons in speakeasies as far away as Chicago would order the Straitsville Special when they wanted a high-quality corn whiskey, Nutter said.

The secret, he explained, is found in New Straitsville�s spring water, which bubbles through the vast mineral deposits and coal veins that once made the region a center of mining.

The water, as well as a huge underground mine fire that burns to this day, helped make New Straitsville a moonshining center. The water gave the �shine a one-of-a-kind tasty profile while the smoke rising through the hills from the fire helped hide the smoke and steam of the stills from federal revenuers.

The distillery will operate year-round in an old general store in the center of town. The front will become a tasting room and a small moonshine museum. The back will hold the still and other production equipment.

Nutter hopes that the distillery will draw visitors to the area throughout the year, not just at festival time.

At first, the distillery plans to produce pure white dog at about 110 proof and a few lower-strength flavored varieties.

The liquor will be sold in the tasting room and through state liquor stores throughout Ohio. Those meddlesome liquor laws limit the distillery�s onsite sales to no more than a gallon per customer per day. But that, I suspect, might quench the thirst of even the most enthusiastic of festival visitors.

Steve Stephens is the Dispatch travel writer. He can be reached at 614-461-5201 or by email.

sstephens@dispatch.com

@SteveStephens