Today I Learned Mountain Dew Was Invented To Mix With Shitty Whiskey

Mountain Dew, a favorite drink amongst truck drivers, video gamers, Taco Bell diners, Skip Bayless, and the rest of the upper echelon has been one of Pepsico's best selling products for a long long time.

And for good reason.

It's just the right balance of c̶r̶a̶n̶k̶ sugar, yellow #5, and high fructose corn syrup.

I was talking with a liquor rep today who is extremely intelligent in the world of dark liquors and they got to telling me some of the history of distilling in the Smokey and the Appalachian Mountains. 

Legitimately fascinating stuff.

But he casually mentioned how "Mountain Dew" was a 19th-century slang term for whiskey, especially "Highland Scotch whiskey". 

Fun Fact- the phrase appears in Irish folk songs from the late 19th century and in an American folk song protesting Prohibition. The latter, simply titled “Mountain Dew,” was composed in 1920 by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, an attorney in Asheville, N.C.

I stopped the record and asked him to elaborate further on the Mountain Dew origin story.

Turns out, two mountain men developed the concoction as a means to cut (dilute) their shitty, prohibition era, homemade whiskey.

Tennessee bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman developed Mountain Dew as a mixer in the 1940s. Soft drinks were sold regionally in the 1930s, and the Hartmans had difficulty in Knoxville obtaining their preferred soda to mix with whiskey, so the two developed their own. Originally a 19th-century slang term for whiskey, the Mountain Dew name was trademarked for the soft drink in 1948.

Charles Gordon, who had partnered with William Swartz to bottle and promote Dr. Enuf, was introduced to Mountain Dew when he met the Hartman brothers on a train and they offered him a sample. Gordon and the Hartman brothers subsequently made a deal to bottle Mountain Dew by the Tri-Cities Beverage Corporation in Johnson City, Tennessee.

The Hartman brothers also asked Coca-Cola for input on their soda. The Coca-Cola Company refused their offer.

The Tip Corporation of Marion, Virginia bought the rights to Mountain Dew, revising the flavor and launching it in 1961. In 1964, Pepsico purchased the Tip Corporation and thus acquired the rights to Mountain Dew. In 1999, the Virginia legislature recognized Bill Jones and the Town of Marion for their role in the history of Mountain Dew.

(Major fuck up by Coca Cola)

I'm not one of those guys who can tell the difference between a great whiskey or a bad one. I wish I was but I'm not. I just know it's big boy stuff and I can't imagine ordering a whiskey and Mountain Dew but now I'm interested.

Fun fact - another nice slang term I picked up was "Heavy Wet". Which refers to malt liquor — because the more a man drinks of it, the heavier and more stupid he becomes.

That is all. Blog over.

—- update —-

A big Mountain Dew fan DM’d me this heater