Drinking Vessels
Appalachia has been influential in developing a wide-array of clever, home-made distillation devices. It has also quietly provided America with an incredible collection of glassware, including cups, bottles, pitchers, and other drinking accoutrements.
Weston, West Virginia is home to the The Museum of American Glass in West Virginia, and Wheeling has the Oglebay Institute Glass Museum. But many other small cities throughout the state had domestic glass manufacturing. The story of the glass industry is a story of the mountains themselves–and the West Virginian penchant for digging into them.
Both silica and coal were bountiful in the state’s natural geology. Silica is a key ingredient in glass, and coal is a key ingredient in heating it for processing. The state was in a perfect position to leverage its natural endowments to make beautiful, ornate pieces for America’s cupboards.
The industry is not well known for those who have never been to the state, but it is a consequential contribution of West Virginia to broader American drinking culture.
Spirits
Strong alcoholic spirits were important to Appalachian beverage culture throughout the 20th century. A 1986 study, “Ancillary use of folk medicine by patients in primary care clinics in southwestern West Virginia” conducted by Cook and Baisden, documented the 15 most popular ingredients in West Virginia folk medicine. Alcohol was the 8th most common medicine.
Some texts discuss where all this liquor came from, providing readers with traditional moonshining instructions. West Virginian distillers would have had to know how to malt their own grain and corn, ferment it into a beer, build a still, and distill the beer into liquor. This is a complicated process from start to finish, and West Virginians don’t do it like everyone else.
In Old Timey Recipes, Phyllis Connor explains a unique strategy for distillation in Appalachia. “The ‘cooker’ consists of two main parts, mainly the top and the bottom. After the mash is put inside, the top is pasted on with ‘red dog chop’ or some other paste. This is so that if the fire is too hot and the pressure builds up, the top will blow off preventing an explosion which might wreck the still.” Today, distillers who operate in the tradition of Appalachia will connect their still with paste to avoid catastrophic explosion.
Anthony Cavender documents the specific remedies that existed in Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia. Liquor features prominently.
Tuberculosis could be treated with whiskey infused with either salt or rattlesnake meat. If a Mountaineer got bit trying to get that snake meat, a snake bite might require “getting dead drunk at once.”
Those with toothaches could hold whiskey in the mouth, while those with arthritic aches should drink a tincture of whiskey and the bark of the wild cherry.
A colicky baby should be given a teaspoon of “‘scorched whiskey’ (whiskey with the alcohol burned out), and paregoric.” Alternatively, both labor and abortion might be induced by drinking gunpowder mixed into whiskey. Cavender makes the special note that this recipe “may be specific to Southern Appalachia.”