Popcorn Sutton: The Last Real Moonshiner (And Why the Feds Couldn't Let Him Be)

On a cold morning in January 2008, ATF agents rolled up a dirt road in Parrottsville, Tennessee, and found exactly what they expected: three copper pot stills, 850 gallons of untaxed moonshine, and 300 gallons of fermenting mash. Standing beside his operation — not running, not hiding, not even mildly inconvenienced — was a 62-year-old man in overalls and a black felt hat, with a beard that hadn't seen a barber since the Carter administration. Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton had been making illegal whiskey for over five decades. He'd filmed documentaries about it. He'd written a book about it. He'd basically handed the federal government a hand-typed confession and dared them to do something.

They finally did something. And the story of what happened next became the last chapter of American moonshining's most defiant life — tangled up in Appalachian pride, federal overreach, and the uncomfortable question of what we lose when the last person who knows how to do something the old way decides he'd rather die than stop.

If you haven't read our deep dive into the history of moonshine, start there. This is what happens when that history walks around in overalls and refuses to become the past.

The Man Behind the Overalls

Marvin Sutton was born on October 5, 1946, in Maggie Valley, North Carolina — a speck of a town in Haywood County, tucked into the Great Smoky Mountains about 30 miles west of Asheville. The Suttons had been distilling corn whiskey in those mountains for at least six generations. Popcorn would later claim the number was higher, telling interviewers his family had been running stills "since before the Revolution." Nobody could prove or disprove this, which is how most Appalachian family histories work.

The nickname came from an incident involving a popcorn machine. The details shift depending on who's telling the story. The most common version: a young Marvin walked into a small-town store, got annoyed by a malfunctioning popcorn vending machine, and destroyed it with a pool cue. Another version has him kicking the machine apart. What every version agrees on is that the name "Popcorn" stuck for the rest of his life.

Physically, Sutton looked like a character escaped from a Cormac McCarthy novel. Wiry, raw-boned, deep-set eyes under a battered hat. The overalls were a daily uniform, not a costume. He married three times — his final wife, Pam, was with him through the last decade of his life. He never lived anywhere but the mountains. Never wanted to. He treated the idea of leaving the Smokies the way a fish treats the concept of hiking.

He claimed he started making liquor at age six, helping his father and grandfather tend stills hidden in the hollows above Maggie Valley. "I've been making liquor since I was six years old," he told filmmaker Neal Hutcheson in 2002, delivering the line with the same casual certainty you'd use to say you've been breathing since birth. For Popcorn Sutton, it was roughly the same thing.

The Craft: Copper, Corn, and Mountain Water

Popcorn Sutton didn't make moonshine the way modern craft distillers make white whiskey. He made it the way his great-great-grandfather made it. The process was as unchanged as the mountains themselves.

His stills were copper pot stills, built by hand, hammered into shape the same way Appalachian distillers had been doing since the 1700s. The recipe was corn-forward: cornmeal, rye, malted barley, sugar, and cold spring water from mountain streams. The sugar was a concession to efficiency that old-time purists might have frowned on, but Sutton was pragmatic about yield. He wasn't making bourbon — he was making mountain whiskey. If you've read our breakdown of bourbon mash bills explained, you know how grain ratios shape flavor. Sutton's mash was traditional mountain: heavy corn, some rye for bite, malt for enzyme conversion.

The critical piece of his setup was the thump keg, also called a doubler — an intermediate vessel between the pot still and the condenser that effectively redistills the vapor before it condenses. It produces cleaner, higher-proof spirit without a second full run. An old Appalachian innovation, elegant and nearly forgotten by the time Sutton was using it.

He operated openly. This was the part that drove law enforcement crazy. In Cocke County, Tennessee — a jurisdiction that has earned its reputation as one of the most lawless in the eastern United States — everyone knew where Popcorn Sutton's stills were. His neighbors knew. The sheriff knew. The mail carrier probably knew. Sutton didn't hide because hiding would have meant admitting he was doing something wrong, and Marvin Sutton had never once, in six decades, conceded that point.

The quality was reportedly excellent. He made foreshot cuts properly, discarding the methanol-rich first runnings. He proofed his whiskey down to drinkable strength. He used clean copper, which strips sulfur compounds during distillation. People who tasted his moonshine described it as smooth, slightly sweet, with a clean corn finish. Not rotgut. Just good whiskey, made by a man who'd spent 55 years perfecting it.

The Book, the Film, and the Fame That Sealed His Fate

Most criminals work hard to avoid publicity. Popcorn Sutton hired a filmmaker.

In the late 1990s, Sutton self-published a slim autobiography called Me and My Likker. He typed the entire manuscript on a manual typewriter — no computer, no editor, no ghost-writer. The book is a rambling, frequently hilarious account of his life in the mountains: his stills, his run-ins with the law, his opinions on the federal government (uniformly negative), and his detailed instructions for building and operating a copper pot still. It reads like a cross between a folk memoir and a federal indictment, written by a man who understood the absurdity of both.

But it was the documentary that made him a legend. In 2002, Appalachian filmmaker Neal Hutcheson released This Is the Last Dam Run of Likker I'll Ever Make, a 30-minute film following Sutton as he built a copper still from scratch and ran a complete batch of moonshine. The title was classic Sutton — he'd been claiming each batch was his last for decades. The film showed everything: still construction, mash preparation, distillation, Mason jar filling. It was, in the most literal sense, a filmed confession to multiple federal crimes.

The documentary became a cult classic. Sutton appeared at screenings, signing copies in his overalls and felt hat. Appalachian studies programs screened it. Television producers came calling. Mountain Dew reportedly explored a partnership — the brand name "Mountain Dew" was originally Appalachian slang for moonshine, a fact that apparently surprised the executives in Purchase, New York. Media outlets from The New York Times to regional papers profiled him. Sutton wasn't performing a character for the cameras. He was himself. The performance was showing up.

"I got the recipe from my daddy, who got it from his daddy, and if I've got any say-so in it, somebody'll be making it after I'm gone."
— Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton

He'd become something rare and contradictory: a celebrity outlaw. A figure of Appalachian cultural preservation who was simultaneously an active federal criminal. The public loved him for it. In a country that venerates self-reliance and mistrusts authority, a man making corn whiskey the way his family had made it since before the government existed was an irresistible narrative. He was the moonshine version of the cowboy mythos — an individual who refused to bend to institutional power, consequences be damned.

He was also, let's be clear, actually breaking the law. Federal agents don't get to decide which laws are charming. The documentary was essentially a training video for prosecutors. And Sutton had prior convictions — charged by both Tennessee and North Carolina multiple times. Each time, he'd paid fines, occasionally done short jail stints, and gone right back to his stills.

The Bust and the Sentence

The ATF had been building a case for months — which, given that Sutton's operation was essentially public, must have been the simplest investigation in the bureau's history. An informant wore a wire. Agents surveilled the property. They assembled evidence with the meticulous care of prosecutors building a case against someone who'd already confessed on film.

The January 2008 raid at his Parrottsville property turned up three operating copper pot stills, 850 gallons of finished moonshine, 300 gallons of fermenting mash, and firearms — a critical problem, because prior felony convictions made gun possession an additional federal charge. The manufacturing charge alone carried up to 10 years. The weapons charge added another 10. This wasn't a state-level fine and a finger-wagging. This was the federal government, and they had him cold.

Released on bond, Sutton spent the next year watching his options disappear. He reportedly never entertained cooperating against other moonshiners — a common lever the feds use to reduce sentences. In Cocke County, cooperating with the federal government carries its own risks.

In March 2009, he pleaded guilty. His attorney requested home confinement, arguing declining health — Sutton had been diagnosed with cancer — and that 18 months in a federal facility was disproportionate for a non-violent offender whose crime was making corn whiskey. U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer denied the request. Report-to-prison date: March 19, 2009.

Eighteen months doesn't sound catastrophic. For a healthy 40-year-old, it's a disruption. For a 62-year-old with cancer, facing the prospect of dying in a concrete box away from his mountains — it was everything. Sutton told people plainly: he was not going. Some took it as bluster. His wife Pam reportedly sensed what was coming.

March 16, 2009: Three Days Before

On March 16, 2009 — three days before he was scheduled to surrender to federal authorities — Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton was found dead in his green Ford Fairlane in Parrottsville, Tennessee. He'd run a hose from the exhaust pipe into the car. Carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 62 years old.

He left a note. The full contents have never been made public, but those who've described it say it was short, defiant, and entirely in character. No apologies. No regrets. Just a man who decided the mountains he'd lived in for six decades would also be where he stopped.

Whether you see this as tragic stubbornness, principled resistance, or the inevitable conclusion of a life lived in opposition to authority depends on where you sit — and probably on how you feel about corn whiskey, federal overreach, and the right of a man to decide when he's done.

He was buried in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, where he was born. His grave has become a pilgrimage site. Visitors leave Mason jars of moonshine on the headstone. The jars are always empty by the next visit — whether taken by pilgrims, park employees, or Popcorn's ghost is a matter of local speculation.

The Legacy: Legal Whiskey, Illegal Memory

Popcorn Sutton's story might have ended at the cemetery. Instead, it went to the liquor store.

In 2010, a legal moonshine brand launched under his name. Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey was developed by Jamey Simpkins — a longtime associate — with backing from country music star Hank Williams Jr. The brand was produced under a federal Distilled Spirits Permit and fully taxed. Everything Popcorn spent his life avoiding. It eventually changed hands and is now owned by Sazerac Company — the same conglomerate behind Buffalo Trace, Blanton's, and Pappy Van Winkle. You can buy a bottle for around $25 at 93 proof. The label features his silhouette in that unmistakable hat.

The irony is inescapable. A man who died rather than submit to federal authority over his whiskey now has his name on a product that exists only because of federal permits and tax compliance. He would almost certainly hate it. He might also find it darkly funny — a man who filmed himself committing federal crimes and sold the footage understood irony.

But the brand is only the most visible piece. Sutton has become an Appalachian cultural icon — his image on T-shirts, posters, and tattoos throughout the Southeast, his documentary screening at folk festivals, Me and My Likker selling for premium prices on the used book market. He's been referenced in songs by Hank Williams Jr. and Steve Earle. In the folk taxonomy of American rebels, he sits alongside the outlaws and bootleggers who defined the frontier.

Who Was the Most Famous Moonshiner?

Popcorn Sutton is widely considered the most famous moonshiner in American history. Earlier figures like Amos Owens (the "Cherry Bounce King" of 19th-century North Carolina) and Lewis Redmond (whose 1876 manhunt made national headlines) achieved notoriety in their eras, but none matched Sutton's combination of longevity, media presence, and cultural impact. Junior Johnson might be more famous overall, but his fame comes from NASCAR, not distilling. Sutton is the only American moonshiner whose primary identity remained moonshiner, undiluted, from childhood to death.

What separates him from every other moonshiner is documentation. Most illegal distillers operated in shadows. Sutton operated in front of cameras. He left behind a book, a documentary, and hundreds of hours of interview footage — a primary source archive on traditional Appalachian distilling that no one else thought to create, because no one else was brazen enough to try.

The Craft Distilling Connection

Walk into any craft distillery tasting room in America and you're standing in a space that owes a philosophical debt to Popcorn Sutton, whether the owners know it or not.

The craft distilling movement — over 2,700 licensed operations and growing — is built on the same values Sutton embodied: small-batch production, handmade process, local ingredients, independence from industrial conglomerates. When a craft distiller sources heirloom corn and runs it through a copper pot still, they're operating a legal version of Sutton's setup. The only difference is the permit on the wall.

The "authenticity" that legal moonshine brands spend millions projecting — Mason jar packaging, rustic labels, Appalachian imagery — is something Sutton had without trying. He didn't brand himself. He was the brand. Every marketing executive chasing "craft credibility" is chasing the ghost of a man who never had a marketing plan, a logo, or a social media presence. He had a still, a recipe, and an absolute refusal to pretend he was anything other than what he was.

Even the bourbon world connects back. The techniques Sutton used — copper pot distillation, corn-heavy mash bills, the thump keg — are the direct ancestors of the processes used on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. The difference is that bourbon goes into a charred oak barrel and sits for years. Sutton's product went into a Mason jar and sat in someone's kitchen for about as long as it took them to open it.

What to Drink in Popcorn's Honor

If you want to raise a glass to Appalachia's most famous moonshiner, you have options ranging from reverential to ironic.

• Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey (93 proof, ~$25): The legal brand bearing his name. Is it what Popcorn made? No. Is it decent corn whiskey? Yes. The irony of toasting a man who died defying the law with a fully taxed product is part of the experience.
• Ole Smoky Original Corn Whiskey (100 proof, ~$25): Produced in Gatlinburg, Tennessee — Smoky Mountain country. Unaged, corn-forward, clean.
• Midnight Moon Original (80 proof, ~$22): Junior Johnson's brand. If you can't toast one legendary moonshiner, toast another.
• Any unaged corn whiskey from a craft distillery near you: The closer to Appalachia, the better. Our guide on how to make bourbon at home covers the grain-to-glass process if you want the full picture — legally, with a permit, which Popcorn would've found contemptible but which we are legally obligated to recommend.

Drink it from a Mason jar. Drink it neat. Don't add ice — Popcorn Sutton didn't own an ice maker, and adding a whiskey stone to mountain moonshine would be a cultural crime worse than anything the ATF charged him with. For more affordable sipping whiskeys worth knowing, browse our best bourbon under $30 picks.

The Last Real Moonshiner

Was Popcorn Sutton really the last real moonshiner? Probably not. Somewhere in the hollows of eastern Tennessee, someone is almost certainly tending a still right now, running a family recipe that predates the county lines drawn on top of it. The tradition is too deep, the mountains too remote, and the stubbornness too ingrained for one man's death to end it. Ask people in Cocke County whether moonshiners still operate and you'll get a shrug, a half-smile, and a change of subject. Some traditions don't announce themselves. For the complete legal landscape, our guide to home distilling laws by state lays out what's permitted and what's not.

But Sutton was the last famous one. The last moonshiner who operated openly, who claimed the identity proudly, who looked directly at the camera and said this is what I do, this is who I am, and I will not stop. Everyone who came before him worked in darkness. Everyone who comes after will work in silence. Popcorn Sutton stood in the light and dared the government to blink.

They didn't blink. And he didn't bend.

His story isn't just about moonshine — though the moonshine matters. It's about what happens when a tradition that predates the laws written to stop it collides with a government that can't distinguish between a criminal and a craftsman. Popcorn Sutton was both, and the system couldn't handle the contradiction.

He's buried in Maggie Valley, under the same mountains where his family first set copper to flame. The grave is easy to find. Bring a jar. Leave it full.

Popcorn Sutton FAQ

What happened to Popcorn Sutton?

Popcorn Sutton was arrested in January 2008 after ATF agents raided his property in Parrottsville, Tennessee, finding three stills and 850 gallons of moonshine. He pleaded guilty to federal distilling and firearms charges in March 2009 and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Three days before he was to report, on March 16, 2009, he was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his car — a suicide. He was 62.

Where was Popcorn Sutton from?

Sutton was born in Maggie Valley, North Carolina (Haywood County) on October 5, 1946. He lived in the Great Smoky Mountains his entire life, splitting time between Haywood County, NC, and Cocke County, Tennessee. He died in Parrottsville, TN, and is buried in Maggie Valley.

Is Popcorn Sutton moonshine still made?

A legal brand called Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey is commercially available. Launched in 2010 by Jamey Simpkins and Hank Williams Jr., it's now owned by Sazerac Company. It's a 93-proof corn whiskey available for around $25 per bottle.

Who was the greatest moonshiner?

Popcorn Sutton is widely regarded as the most famous and influential moonshiner in American history. His lifelong dedication to the craft, self-published autobiography, cult documentary, and defiant death made him a folk legend unmatched by any other figure in moonshining history.

What was Popcorn Sutton's autobiography called?

Me and My Likker — a self-published memoir typed on a manual typewriter. It covers his life, distilling techniques, and philosophy about moonshining, mountain life, and the federal government. Original copies are now collector's items.

What documentary featured Popcorn Sutton?

Neal Hutcheson's 2002 film This Is the Last Dam Run of Likker I'll Ever Make followed Sutton as he built a copper still from scratch and distilled a batch of moonshine. The 30-minute documentary became a cult classic and is widely credited with making Sutton a national folk figure.