Moonshine making comeback on Blue Ridge

The moonshine still sat abandoned in a wooded area of FranklinCounty, the stainless steel tub filling with leaves and dead pineneedles.

Nearby was a second still -- a 400-gallon vessel that looked likea home heating oil tank tipped on its side.

The stills, functional but empty, were seized by VirginiaDepartment of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents during a raid inthe county's Penhook section earlier this month.

More than a decade after a federal crackdown that largely erased moonshine in Southwest Virginia, illegal liquor appears to betrickling out of the Blue Ridge again. Just this month, agentsbased in Roanoke have seized five stills, including the two inPenhook on March 12. More investigations are under way, said ChrisGoodman, resident agent in charge of the region's ABC office.

"The general feeling is that the moonshine trade -- if you wantto call it that -- is re-emerging," said Goodman. He speculatedthat the lousy economy is driving the surge, as in the past.

Goodman commands a dozen ABC agents responsible for policing the territory from Highland County to Henry County, an area famous forits rich moonshine-making history.

In the fiscal year that ended in June 2010, ABC agents reported investigating 22 stills, the most since the U.S.-led OperationLightning Strike in 1999 led to the convictions of 29 people.

And that's with an ABC that no longer has its Illegal WhiskeyUnit. The bootlegger-busting unit group was shut down in 2009, whenseveral agents retired and the state cut funding for theirpositions.

"Obviously we'd like to have more personnel," Goodman said. "Wedo what we can with what we have."

Investigations now include the Internet. Agents seized threestills in Henry County on March 9 after buying a new copper stillon the auction site eBay for $240.

When agents went to a Collinsville house to pick up the purchase,they found two more stills in the seller's house, said ABCspokesman Philip Bogenberger.

The 46-year-old seller has not been charged. He declined tocomment on the raid.

Bogenberger said the case will go before a grand jury.

The Penhook bust involved months of investigation, Goodman said.

More than a dozen officers raided a house in the 100 block ofPoplar Branch Lane on March 12, finding 16 firearms, including anautomatic weapon, the ABC said.

The stills were located on property adjacent to the house,Goodman said.

Charles Thomas Caruso, 63, was charged with two counts ofpossession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of anautomatic weapon, and possession of ammunition for a firearm by aconvicted felon. The ABC is still investigating the stills.

Goodman said the raids should dispel the idea that bootleggingwill go undetected without the Illegal Whiskey Unit.

"We're going to continue looking at it, and adapting our methodsand techniques to current times and situations," Goodman said.

There have been dozens of Southwest Virginia raids on moonshinestills in the past decade, but none as large as Operation LightningStrike.

"Operation Lightning Strike was a huge explosion, and it wipedthings clean," said Max Watman, author of the 2010 book, "Chasingthe White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw's Adventures in Moonshine," whichchronicles outlaw whiskey in Southwest Virginia.

"For a moment, it was a really bad idea to run moonshine inSouthwest Virginia," Watman said.

The Lightning Strike busts brought down a Rocky Mount store thatsupplied moonshiners, and sent two ringleaders to prison, one forsix years.

Fear drove some whiskeymakers who escaped the raids to NorthCarolina, where bootlegging is a misdemeanor, Watman said.

But Southwest Virginia's mountains unlikely stayed dry for long,Watman said. Money and tradition are too powerful, he said.

"It's a hard thing to move away from," Watman said.