Local farmers Billy Kaufman and John Whittemore spoke earlier today with WZTV Fox 17’s John Dunn. Skooter FarmDog even makes a cameo in this news clip.

In November, Cannon County voters will decide whether or not to allow a distillery to be built in the county. To Billy and John, it’s about honoring and preserving our way of life.

Up in the hills of Cannon County, Billy Kaufman hopes to turn water into shine.

“This water here is pure,” says Kaufman next to his mountain spring.

The organic farmer wants to open the Short Mountain Distillery here using old fashioned recipes for moonshine.

“One of the famous quotes for this area is without whiskey and baskets we all would have starved to death,” says Kaufman.

This November, Cannon County voters will have a referendum to decide if a distillery should be built here.

Kaufman promises at least a small number of jobs, and an increase in tourism.

“To me it’s about jobs and preserving our rural lifestyle,” says Billy Kaufman.

(WOODBURY, TN) – A group wanting to create a Tennessee brand of distilled spirits in Cannon County, Tennessee will turn in petition signatures Friday at noon for a county wide referendum. (photo courtesy of Cannon Courier)

Cannon County farmer Billy Kaufman and supporters will deliver over 800 signatures collected over the past two months to Cannon County Election Commission Chair Stanley Dobson at noon today in Woodbury, TN. The signatures must be validated and approved by the county commission before voters can decide in the county’s November general election whether or not they want a distillery under a new state law.

If voters approve the referendum, Short Mountain Distillery will operate on Kaufman’s 300 acre farm on Short Mountain in Liberty, Tennessee.

“This is about jobs,” said Kaufman. “It’s also about tourism, revenue and the kind of sustainability we need to preserve our way of life.”

In 2009, the state legislature passed a law allowing legal distilleries across the state of Tennessee. Lawmakers put in place a referendum process for counties that do not already allow liquor by the drink or package stores. Distillery referendum petitions require a total number of signatures equal to the county’s total votes cast in the last Presidential election.

Cannon County has a rich agricultural heritage that also produced what some say was the best distilled spirits in the country before and during prohibition. Moonshine from the hills of Cannon County is specifically celebrated in old time country music songs once sung at the Grand Ole Opry by Uncle Dave Macon, Porter Wagoner and others. Tennessee is well known around the world for Jack Daniel’s and George Dickel aged whiskeys.

“Throughout this process we spoke with a lot of people, young and old, who have called Cannon County home all their life,” Kaufman said. “The support and enthusiasm people are sharing with us has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Short Mountain Distillery will bring tourism, jobs and needed county revenue while honoring the community’s history and character.

“We want to work directly with local farmers and businesses as we grow,” Kaufman said. “We want to share our local history with the world, and we want tourism to bring new opportunities for local businesses.”

Kaufman and his brothers, David and Ben, are the great-grand children of Jesse Shwayder, the founder of another well-known American brand Samsonite 100 years ago in 1910. Their grandfather, Louis Degan, ran Samsonite’s Murfreesboro, TN location for decades employing many Middle Tennesseans.

Short Mountain Distillery will be a small-batch craft distiller creating specialty brands of moonshine and aged whiskey. For more information and photos from today’s filing, visit our website at http://www.shortmountaindistillery.com. 

Cannon County residents helped us reach our petition signature goal at Saturday’s Celebration on the Square in Woodbury, TN. Hundreds of county residents weathered the brutal heat to celebrate the completion of renovations to the county’s historic courthouse.

A couple of days after the August elections, we’ll turn in the signatures we’ve gathered to place the ballot question before Cannon County voters in November. The referendum results will decide whether or not voters will allow an American brand of distilled spirits to operate on Short Mountain and bring  jobs, tourism, and revenue to the local economy.

With your support in November, Short Mountain Distillery will honor and preserve a long history of distilled craft spirits from the hills of Cannon County that at one time was said to be the finest in the country. Over the next few months we hope to give you a taste of our rich agricultural heritage here in Cannon County and help honor a way of life we hope to share with tourists from across the nation and around the world.

If you didn’t get a chance to sign our petition, you can catch us election day August 5th gathering more signatures than we need to make certain the good people of Cannon County can vote for their future in November.

Every now and then, as folks sign our November referendum petition, someone shares with us a wonderful family story of a time when it was said that illegal moonshine from Short Mountain was considered the finest in the country.

They were stories of neighbors, family and friends. They were also stories of outlaws like Cooper Melton as shared with us by Melanie Garrett Nistad, the great granddaughter of Cooper Melton.

Cooper vs. Capone
Story Told by Joe Underwood
Mechanicsville History Meeting December 1, 2002

“Here’s one for you… Jim Dearman and my dad were pretty close in age. They both told me that the best moonshine in the country was made at Short Mountain. They were very particular they really wanted to make good whiskey, and they did- like a cook would want to make a good cake, they came from everywhere. Al Capone was running big guns in Chicago and he sent two cars to Short Mountain, to get whiskey that Cooper Melton made.

They all will tell you, that the cooler the water is for the condensing coil in the process of making whiskey, the quicker it will condense.  Now, the coldest water anywhere around the mountain is running out the north side of the mountain and Cooper Melton’s big spring ran water out of the north side of the mountain. He had a fabulous still up there. He had super big boiler. Ruth Hale Barrett confirms that she has been to that spring (but confirms that she has not taken part of the whiskey!) It was one of the most modern stills for the time.

Capone came here to get a load of whiskey and he had a pretty bad name. The old timers’ told me this, they said the locals were really scared that he would come and load up, shoot them and go away and not pay. So, what they did was these locals got them a plan. They said they hid behind rocks and holes in the ground and up in trees and everywhere with their firearms. They said “they’ll drive up to the still and they will load up”.

They brought a carload of thugs with him with guns, which would scare anybody. “If you hear a shot fired, don’t let them come out of that holler from that still”. So, they were laying for them in case they tried to rob them, and they wouldn’t have gotten away. So they came, got their load of whiskey, paid for it, and them ol’ boys let them drive right on back to Chicago!”

Tell us your stories about Short Mountain moonshine. We’d love to share them with the world.

A couple of days ago we started slowly gathering signatures from our friends and neighbors who want to see a new opportunity for jobs and growth come to Cannon County.

As of today, we’re 7% of the way to our goal.

Starting July 1, you can start checking the thermometer here daily to see how close we are to the total number of  signatures we need to place a referendum on the November ballot. That will allow voters to decide whether they want to allow distilleries like the one that opens this weekend in Gatlinburg, TN or the Jack Daniel’s and George Dickel distilleries.

How to help: We’ve gotten a few folks contact us letting us know they want to sign our petition. If you would like for us to visit you, please remember to include your address and phone number so we can make sure you’ll be home. Let us know if you would like to help gather signatures as well. Only registered voters of Cannon County are eligible to sign the petition.

In the news: Don’t miss the article on our effort in this week’s Cannon Courier. If you are registered for their website, you can read the story here.

Our friends: One of the guys helping gather signatures is a long time Cannon County resident and farmer John Whittemore.  John’s great grandfather was a moonshiner in Cannon County. John’s on Facebook if you want to speak with him about helping us out. Check back later this week for more information about John and why he’s helping.

(AUTHOR NOTE: the following story is a reprint of my exclusive breaking news post on WKRN’s “Nashville Is Talking” on May 5, 2008)

One of the backers of the proposed Bible Theme Park USA in Murfreesboro is a very successful businessman but was once more known for his photographs of cover girls and “Pets of the Month” for Penthouse Magazine.

Amnon Bar-Tur’s photographs graced the covers of at least one other adult magazine and spanning from the late 60s to the early 80s. A quick online search revealed this and also reference to a 2001 Chapter 11 filing of a photography and media company Bar-Tur co-founded that reportedly owed $34,000,0000 to J.P. Morgan Chase.

J.P. Morgan Chase had given the company a loan of about $35 million to finance a number of mergers, according to an affidavit of David J. Manning, C2 Media’s president and chief executive.

C2 Media acquired seven companies just before it began operations in May 1999. It purchased four other companies during the first quarter of 2000, the affidavit said.

Amnon Bar-Tur is in his element bringing big money to big deals. In October of last year, Amnon Bar-Tur was interviewed in a New York Times article about a high end investment club he’s a part of called Tiger 21 (The Investment Group for Exceptional Returns in the 21st Century). As Amnon and others suggest in the article, Tiger 21 is also a kind of therapy group from millionaires.

The very act of giving a narrative shape to one’s life story, he said, not only helps the rest of the group better understand that person and his issues and priorities; it also helps the presenter focus on the rationale for decisions he has made and decisions he is considering. That level of depth means the group is uniquely qualified to challenge someone when he is veering off track or dreaming of something that from the perspective of one or more members of the group could prove disastrous.

Amnon’s life journey more recently involves organizing capital to back creative theme parks ventures with the help of fellow Tiger 21 members.

Amnon Bar-Tur, managing partner of SafeHarbor Holdings, an investment holding company, recently joined a fellow Tiger member, and together they raised $330 million from investors to build a Hard Rock Theme Park in Myrtle Beach, S.C. “We’re wealthy enough where we can pool our assets and open our own doors into alternative investments,” says Sonnenfeldt. Indeed, the group’s total assets surpass $5 billion.

In 2006, Amnon Bar-Tur announced that partnership on behalf of Safeharbor Holdings, LLC with a fellow Tiger 21 member to bring Hard Rock Park to Myrtle Beach, SC. Two years later, Hard Rock Park’s grand opening is now a month away. But two weeks before that grand opening is a May 15 date with the Rutherford County Commission to learn whether another one of Safeharbor’s theme park projects will get the county’s stamp of approval. Hard Rock Park plans to publish their first quarter earnings on the same day.

According to the proposed park’s website, Bible Park USA will be a “park that brings the Bible to life through well-loved, familiar stories and ancient historical experiences.” The park is proposed for the Blackman community near 840. The park developer and project sponsor is Amnon Bar-Tur’s son, Safeharbor Holding co-founder and managing director Armon Bar-Tur. You might have seen him quoted in stories about the park’s progress throughout Rutherford County’s approval process.

One person you won’t see quoted often in this deal is Armon’s father. Amnon has a keen sense for business and made Hard Rock Park a reality, but in the late 60s, 70s and 80s he had a good eye for something entirely different. Amnon, it turns out, is somewhat famous to those who now collect his work published in the pages of Penthouse Magazine. Several editions throughout the early 1970s featuring Amnon’s cover girls and Pets of the Month go for as much as $30 online. Editions of Club, a more hard core adult magazine featuring Bar-Tur’s work, now go for as much as $300.

Before word of this latest revelation was known to many of the businesses now supporting the developer’s plans, local business owner Sharon Petty put the proposed uses of the Blackman Community property in stark religious terms (listen to the audio).

“I mean, we’re right smack in the middle of all the Bible belt. So people really look at Murfreesboro as kind of a Mecca. It’s a place to actually join in together. Blackman community is really going to benefit from this rather than hurting them. They could have had all kinds of ugly things. They could have even had adult entertainment on that highway, on that freeway. You can actually have adult entertainment. Which one would they rather have? Something with God’s book on it, or would they rather have the Devil’s den out there?”

It is not clear what the impact, if any, this news will have on supporters of Bible Theme Park USA. but it does raise one very important question. How much due diligence have county commissioners and supporters done when a simple Google search would have revealed this and more?

UPDATE 3:57pm – Jeff Diamond with The Ingram Group, a firm retained by Safeharbor Holdings, LLC as a consultant on public and government relations for Bible Theme Park USA, sent a bio for Amnon Bar-Tur (view full word doc). Ingram Group also shared the following statement from Amnon’s son Armon in response to this developing story.

“Surely what a young immigrant photographer did 35 years ago to make a living in his first job out of college as a fashion photographer has no relevance to the development of our world-class tourist attraction in Rutherford County in 2008.

“I am proud of what my father, Amnon Bar-Tur, has accomplished in his lifetime — from young Israeli soldier and veteran newspaper photographer to head of European operations for SafeHarbor Holding. He has been a wonderful father and mentor to me, and I am saddened that this has become a matter for tabloid-style journalism.”