Shine On, Georgia Moon

Moonshining has siphoned off $7 billion in liquor taxes in the past decade, the Licensed Beverage Industries, the trade association of legitimate distillers, complained last week. Moonshiners themselves are lamenting their own losses to a new and formidable competitor, who does not have to worry about revenooers busting up his stills. The competitor: Georgia's Viking Distillery, which has brought out a 90-proof corn whisky, Georgia Moon, that is just as throat-burning, stomach-churning and aggressively youthful (none older than 30 days) as its backwoods counterpart. The difference is that it bears the federal excise stamp.

Viking, which has raised its sales from $700,000 in 1957 to $8,000,000 last year by aggressive selling, at first tried to cut into the lucrative moonshine market by selling Georgia Moon in the usual narrow-necked bottles (Brown-Forman also puts out a narrow-necked corn). But it had little success in bucking the ingrained habits of shine drinkers, who like to drink out of Mason jars, the South's traditional moonshine container. After dickering with the Treasury, Viking got permission last month to put its corn likker into Mason-jar fifths (retail price: $3.50 to $4.50, depending on the state, v. about $4 for a quart jar of moonshine), has watched its sales suddenly jump. Last week Georgia Moon was selling in 20 states. "It shows," says Viking General Manager Sidney Witlen, "that in a business where 85% of the output comes from four giants, there is still room for a small distillery. All you need is a gimmick."

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