An introduction to drinking in Tennessee

In the course of our Tennessee adventure, we came across a variety of locally made drinks, including beer, wine, whisky, bourbon and moonshine.

Our self-guided tasting tour of Tennessee started at a local liquor store near Johnson City.

We'd passed a number of vineyards along the nearby highways, so we asked about Tennessee wine. This store offered one variety, and we took home a bottle of Tennessee-made apple peach wine. The peach flavor was strong, the apple was subtle, and overall, this sweet wine was fun to drink, though I'm still not sure if it was best suited to go along with dinner or to stand alone afterward as dessert.

In that same store, we found an entire selection of moonshine. It's weird to think of moonshine as a commercially packaged drink, but we went along and I picked out the most traditional looking bottle (glass jug) I could find, which ended up being Roberson's Tennessee Mellomoon.

At first sip, this drink was rough. I had it just after dinner, and maybe having another taste involved made it a lot harder to swallow. Later on, I was able to appreciate it's subdued sweetness and the little jug was empty after another week or so.

Bourbon, moonshine and whisky at Corky's in Memphis.

Later on in our trip, we found a hip, but empty place called Flow in the bottom of an old, downtown residential building in Knoxville. Flow serves coffee drinks and local beer to the residents. I ordered a coffee-flavored oatmeal stout by Memphis's Wiseacre brewery and enjoyed it from one of a couple sofa chairs on the far end of the room.

The staff at the Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville surprised us with a wine tasting at the end of its tour. The plantation was once known for thoroughbred horses, but today it offers its own selection of wine, which is where I discovered muscadine wine.

Muscadine wine is a southern staple, apparently, because I heard about later in country songs such as Jason Aldean's "Country Boy's World" and Canaan Smith's "Love You Like That":

Muscadine grapes are larger than other grapes, with stronger skins, and they grow individually on the vine as opposed to in clusters. Of the Belle Meade wines we tried, the muscadine wine was my favorite. At home, we paired the sweet wine with a spicy dish, and it was perfect.

Finally, in Memphis, Tennessee, we sought out Corky's Ribs & BBQ where part of its offering was a custom flight of bourbon, whisky and moonshine.

I tried a sweet tea moonshine that tasted like a spiked iced tea. The Jack Daniel's Fire whisky is Tennessee's answer to Fireball, and it offers a delicious cinnamon flavor. Calling back to our plantation experience, the third drink I tried was the Belle Meade bourbon. As the most traditional flavor of the bunch, this was my favorite, but the novelty of the other two drinks made it a tough call.

Image courtesy of trndmonitor.com.

One last note: it was in a Tennessee discount liquor store that we first spotted Tennessee's own Dr. Enuf soda as well as the above curiosity, courtesy of Budweiser. We purchased a can of this hideous-sounding, light beer concoction, but to this day, we haven't found the courage to try it.