MARMET, W.Va. — One of the stars of the Discovery Channel reality show Moonshiners rubbed elbows with West Virginians Wednesday. Celebrity moonshiner Jim Tom Hedrick made stops in Marmet and Beckley.
“They make a lot of liquor up in this country,” Hedrick told MetroNews. “West Virginia, they’ve done a lot of good moonshine-making in this state because I know I’ve drank a lot of it.”
Hedrick is on tour signing autographs on his unaged rye, which is part of Sugarlands Shine. His promoters have said it’s Jim Tom’s pursuit of going “legal,” making his brand of shine available to the public for the first time.
During his stop at a liquor store in Marmet he asked people to buy his shine so he would have enough money to get back to North Carolina. In a more serious moment, he was asked if he ever thought Moonshiners would be as popular as it has been when it debuted in 2011.
“Everyone asks me, ‘Jim Tom, we know you’ve made a lot of whiskey in your days but did you ever really think about it being legal with your picture on it and your name and all of that?’ And I said, ‘No sir, I never imagined that,’ but it’s going good and going big and I’m tickled to death,” Hedrick said.
Sugarlands Distilling Company is based in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.