About Five Mile Mountain
Let’s face it people! Whiskey has been part of our nation’s history since the beginning, and moonshine is a deep-rooted ingredient in the mix that is Floyd County, Virginia. During prohibition, neighboring county Franklin was hailed as “Moonshine Capital of the World.” However, Floyd was actually a much larger producer. Some of the biggest houses on our main strip in downtown Floyd attest to that because they were built with the all mighty money from moonshine!
Old timers from these parts tell stories of hills so covered in moonshiner’s fires that they resembled fireflies rising out of the meadows on a summer night. Or how they would back their cars all the way up the windy one lane road of Five Mile Mountain to load their trunks with whiskey so they could barrel through the brigades of police cars coming to break up the party. Here in Floyd County the stories of moonshining, either making it or running it, are as rich as the historic vein of Appalachian music that pulses through Floyd—and we are proud of it!
We will be Floyd’s first distillery since prohibition. We are using the same old recipes with traditional copper stills on open flames. Our batches of whiskey are handcrafted and kept small so we can ensure our product is known for the same quality as our predecessors. Now that it’s time to share the magic of Blue Ridge Mountains shine, we’re bottling up the love, history, and distinctive taste of Five Mile Mountain and putting it on the shelves for everyone to enjoy. Cheers!
history of the distillery building
The building that Five Mile Mountain Distillery resides in began its life as the Floyd County Public Service Authority (PSA). It was built right after World War II. The building pumped water from Dodds Creek before treating it and sending it on to the town’s water tower, where it was then gravity fed to both Floyd’s businesses and residences. As the town grew, wells were drilled to facilitate the increasing need for water and in 1976 the old water works building was closed. It remained vacant and deteriorated slowly until July of 2013 when it was purchased and repurposed for the distillery.
With great determination and lots of blood and sweat, life was brought back into this beautiful old structure. Renovating this rustic building was a very odd task due to the removal of thousands of gallons of water, thousands of pounds of steel and cast iron pipe, and very old, hard concrete. We feel as though all our hard work was well worth it to save such a unique piece of Floyd’s history.
