El Roco

My recent trip to the Badlands of North Dakota with the family yielded mostly a wide assortment of wildlife photos and sore fingers from a lot of white knuckle driving on the Interstate. The last day of the trip, as is often the case, was unofficially "duty free day". And so it was to be. Unfortunately, a company called DFA is the only duty free game going at the Pembina border since Happy Harry's closed up its shop long time ago. DFA has a very limited selection of booze mostly catering to the Crown Royal crowd. Grand Forks also has limited options also but a couple of searches revealed a bottle shop called "El Roco" (The Rock, a reference to ice cubes I think).

Pulling up in the RV, a la Heisenberg, one is greeted by an old school sign towering over the establishment which is fifty per cent bottle shop, and twenty five per cent each of "bar" and payday loan store. Despite the appearance on the outside the staff were very cordial and professional. I immediately made my way to the Scotch and Bourbon section only to be disappointed by the limited selection. Luckily, next to this grey cloud was a wee little silver lining, a small little "moonshine" section. A bottle of Junior Johnson's "Midnight Moonshine" a corn whisky (bourbon?) which came in three varieties: regular, apple pie and strawberry, the latter two are packaged in mason sealer jars with curls of cinnamon or floating alcohol bleached white strawberries. I chose the "straight" variety not wanting any further adulteration added to the product.
Seems to be a small batch distillery based in Madison, North Carolina. My particular bottle was labeled #193 with a hooky write-up that starts with "while your grand-daddy was firing up a pipe Junior Johnson's was firing up a still...". The product definitely lives up to it's name of moonshine. The taste is somewhere between vodka and rubbing alcohol with no discernible traces of any flavour, probably explains the two other "flavored" varieties. Call it marketing. It will make a special appearance at a future Cabinet meeting probably on a themed "moonshine" night.