Moonshine Maker
Note: This piece, written in 2011, was shortlisted for the Saveur magazine Best Piece of Culinary Writing prize in their 2012 Best Food Blog Awards. My food memoir website, Nostrovia!, where this piece first appeared has long been defunct, and most of the writing and photography it housed disappeared with it. My mother had printed “Moonshine Maker” when it first published, and on a recent visit with her she gave me the copy. This piece marks the first time I really connected with a wide audience in a meaningful way, and so it seemed right that it joined the archives here.
Eva Zubryk was a tough lady. You could just tell.
My maternal great-grandmother was short but stalwart, holding her ground in sensible shoes. They were black or the colour of caramel, tied securely with thin, silky laces passing through eyelets that looked impenetrable, as if they were just for show, having been dabbed onto the leather with the tip of a Sharpie. Even her dress shoes were low to the ground and neutrally hued. Their lack of frivolity made a statement.
Her hands were broad, with thick fingers that went about innumerable tasks in a day: peeling potatoes, punching down bread dough, weeding the garden, scraping clothes against a washboard, polishing furniture. Earlier in her life they had farmed wheat, raised pigs, scrubbed others’ floors, sewed burlap bags for Ontario onions, and prepared food for workers on their way home from shifts at the local factory. Her hands knew what it was to work.
Grainy and assertive, even her voice pulled no punches. When she laughed the sound hurtled from a deep, hidden place, pulling her shoulders up with it. If something was really funny, she might let one of her powerful hands drop onto the table in front of her in a kind of exclamation point. One of the hallmarks of having lived a hard life is that you don’t hold back when moments of joy offer themselves up.
And a hard life she lived, indeed. Arriving in Canada as a toddler, she knew the challenges of trying to assimilate, of creating an existence — one’s shelter, food, and a living — from the land. She knew poverty and heartbreak and hard luck. She also knew how to take chances, to hope, to love despite the odds, and to do whatever was necessary to provide for her family.
It was the necessity to do whatever it took to pay the bills and to put food on the table that made Eva Zubryk a skilled — and crafty — bootleg whiskey maker.
My grandmother, Ana, often told stories about her mother made that whiskey secretly on their farm in Saskatchewan. She claimed that Eva’s still was so well hidden underground that you could walk right over it and never suspect what went on beneath your feet. The product was good enough that it sold well in the city, and Eva used to pack special suitcases with tin canisters that held her wares and took them by train to Regina, managing to hawk her home brew clandestinely every time, returning home with lighter luggage but a heavier purse. (My grandmother also always delighted to mention that the one time Eva’s then-husband insisted he would take the trip into town, he was arrested for the illegal sale of alcohol within an hour of departing the train.)
Of course, being adept at producing sought-after black-market hooch in those days meant that you received disproportionate attention from the Royal Mounted Canadian Police. On one such surprise visit from the RCMP, Eva was fermenting her mash on the kitchen stove and had to send Ana out to the pig pen with the pot while she escorted the men in uniform through the house and around the grounds. The mounties had left by the time the pigs’ mid-morning snack had a chance to kick in and the soused swine passed out in the yard to sleep off their unplanned bender.
The stakes were higher, though, one morning when Eva was packing her suitcases with freshly decanted bottles, preparing to take the trip into the city to make some much-needed supplemental income during a tough stretch of drought on the farm. Did she hear the thudding at the end of the lane first, or did she feel it, the impact of horses’ hooves as they pounded down on dry summer earth, kicking up a cloud of dust around their riders? The RCMP were visiting at a most inopportune time. Dumping mash in a hurry is one thing, but to lose an entire finished batch of whiskey is another. And what to do with the bottles, even if they could be emptied in time?
Eva sent her daughter to the front door to greet the unexpected visitors. Ana was polite, and neither hurried nor tarried in her responses to their questions and in acquiescing to their request to enter. They followed her into the farmhouse and found Eva seated at the kitchen table near the wall, feeding her son, whom she held in her arms. Occupied, she asked the officers if they minded Ana touring them around any of the yard or fields they wished to inspect. Unwilling to disturb a mother nursing her child, they followed my grandmother, barely beyond childhood at the time, outside.
After the RCMP had left, unable, as usual, to find any hard evidence that Eva was moonshining, Ana returned to the kitchen. Eva handed Ana her brother, lifted her strategically draped long skirt, and pulled out the suitcases from beneath the chair where they been hiding during the visit from the police.
As far as I know, Eva made whiskey on that farm in Saskatchewan with her perfect record intact.
I was not unaware of my great-grandmother’s legacy when I decided to make raspberry gin. Having been rather enthusiastic while picking raspberries that were pretty close to perfect after a hot and sunny stretch of weather, I found myself with a persisting surfeit of berries even after making a quadruple batch of jam, baking two pies, and storing enough in my freezer to make two more pies over the winter. A fruity spirit seemed no match for Eva’s straight-up whiskey, but then again I’m not overly keen to have people in uniform knocking on my door unannounced and sniffing around my backyard.
Still, berries are a big thing in Eastern Europe. After you’ve endured a seemingly endless frigid winter, the sight of luscious red berries ripening in 30-degree heat has to seem like nothing short of a dizzying miracle. One way to preserve that flavour is to infuse vodka with sour cherries, cranberries, and blackberries and enjoy the alcohol’s warmth, and the memories of summer imparted by the berries’ essence year-round.
The thing is, I’m more of a gin girl — there’s something about that piney scent of juniper that makes the spirit so much more interesting than vodka. And it’s hard to argue the merits of a good gin and tonic when the summer months are in full swing. A variation using raspberry gin, tonic, lime, and mint?
It’s no moonshine. But it’s still pretty good. Here’s to you, Baba Eva — Na Zdorovie!
