TASTING NOTES

SHINE ON GEORGIA MOON CORN WHISKEY

Well, after having last ventured to sample Highland Park 18 years old scotch whisky, and run the risk of a headlong early meeting with the perfect whisky, I feel we are on safer ground now. No chance of this one prompting the premature cry of “that’s all folks!” and the closure of the Grainmash quest. Whilst Highland Park might threaten this site with the equivalent of a faster finish than a virgin’s first jig in a whorehouse, I was pretty confident that “Shine On Georgia Moon” was not going to leave this search reaching somewhat prematurely for the wet wipes. For what we have here is a fully fledged, wholly basic corn whiskey!

Let’s start by saying that the plain label on a wonderful old Mason Jar, resplendent with metal lid, is a wonderful piece of honesty. In fact, from head to toe this whiskey is totally honest, and gains top marks. In some ways, I guess you know you are in for a Ronseal moment, with this bottle promising to do nothing more or less than it says on the tin.

What we have here is some genuine corn squeezin’, some white lightning, some corn likker, some white dog, liver varnish. Shine On Georgia Moon is a pure play corn liquor, not aged, not seasoned, in fact not having so much as having peeped at an oak barrel. Instead, we have raw, less than 30 day old, corn whiskey, manufactured and bottled in Kentucky, and shipped out just about as butt naked as the day it was poured from the 80% of corn mash required to entitle it to the name “corn whiskey”.

Aside from the smile this bottle guarantees, it cries out to be tasted complete with a set of props. For the full experience, we need a barn, hay, blue denim dungarees, some hand rolled cigarettes and a brown paper bag. Pouring it into a glass is like asking James Dean to ride a Wild Horse with a dressing gown, pipe, Trilby and some slippers. It’s just wrong.

The funniest review I read was the one which explained in far more direct tones than this that the smell is far worse than the taste (it does smell very uninviting), and that the taste is a surprisingly gentle one, but only because a protective layer of corn oil was stamping out the otherwise awful burning agony that seemed unavoidable upon contact. Imagine a fist punching your cheek into your eye-socket, and you have the taste suggested by the nose.

The feeling is very much gentler than that, but the sense that there is a residue building up is both fair and accurate. The suggestion that it’s best mixed with coke – always the harshest suggestion Grainmash can make – might be unfair. From a pure whisky perspective, it may be fair, but this jar never pretended to be anything other than it is, and that saves it from any negative press. In fact, Shine On Georgia Moon is far from awful and well worth a taste. It’s one of those “once in your life” things that you just have to do, or you will simply never know what it is like.

If you never want to know, and you’re insistent on going feet first out of this life without a taste of corn whiskey, you’re going to have to thank Grainmash for telling you that it’s not the best whiskey in the world, for sure, guaranteed. On the other hand, it is one of the most honest, and it is without doubt a throwback to a simpler time, perhaps a better day, when folk from the country drank from the very fields they worked.

© 2009 GrainMash.