Southwind Moonshine

Southwind Moonshine

Southwind corn whiskey moonshine began when two artists, Maxime Berthou and Mark Polep, took an old paddle steamer down the Mississippi River exactly 1712 miles of it. After two years of preparation the month-and-a-half journey took the pair through 10 states during the record-breaking 2019 floods. The 21-foot steamboat mostly putted along happily at up to 4 miles per hour (3.5 knots), though not without incident while the flooding provided a lot of driftwood for fuel, it also caused the rudder to break 3 times. The wood-fired engine took lots of hard work, with the pair working in 2-hour shifts. The duo had set out with several goals in mind: The adventure would serve as a basis for a book and film, but more importantly for us they would gather several samples of corn along the way from at least 10 different producers and create a moonshine once the journey was completed. But they couldn't just go about creating the moonshine the ordinary way. Once they moored in New Orleans, the boat was transformed into a floating distillery, producing moonshine from the 42 corn varieties they gathered from 10 different states. With the help of Big Easy's own Seven Three Distilling the pair created Southwind a moonshine that tells the story of the Mississippi River and their epic undertaking.