Palmetto Moonshine Shines Down on Myrtle Beach

There was a time when buying moonshine meant making some clandestine trip to the mountains and an illegal transaction with some toothless guy in overalls. Now you can pick some up while you're vacationing in Myrtle Beach, right under the cops' noses.

Things have changed since the days of moonshine runners racing revenuers on the back roads of the Carolinas. Nearly a century since the end of Prohibition, the state of South Carolina finally cleared the way for the legal production and distribution of moonshine.

Enter Palmetto Moonshine, an outfit from the Upstate of South Carolina that decided to take an old family recipe to the shelves of liquor stores. Furthermore, Palmetto Moonshine opened its own facility in Myrtle Beach in the summer of 2014.

“Myrtle Beach was a great location to have another presence for our brand,” said co-owner Bryan Boggs. “With the economic growth and development of Myrtle Beach we felt this was a perfect venue to reach an enormous amount of people from all over the world. Our product is not just a Southern phenomenon, it speaks a universal language.”

Brother and co-owner Trey Boggs called the move to Myrtle Beach in keeping with the Boggs family traditions. “We grew up coming to Myrtle Beach every summer our entire lives. For me, summer hadn’t started until we were headed to the beach. When the idea came up to have another store the decision on location was easy because Bryan and I started the business based on family background.”

The result is a 3,000 square foot facility on the south end of Myrtle Beach. The store displays the 250-gallon still that was used to produce the original batches of Palmetto Moonshine. Free tours are available, and visitors can sample and purchase the product on-site. There's also a souvenir shops where guests can buy T-shirts and other memorabilia.

Palmetto Moonshine features the original family recipe plus a wide variety of flavored shine made with fresh berries. Current concoctions include blackberry, peach, red cherry, scuppernong, strawberry, blackberry, cherry apple, and muscadine, plus a unique mixture known as Zoo on the Roof.

(posted 7/22/14)
(photo courtesy: Fishnoises, Jun 2014)