During prohibition, a famous judge in New Mexico, originally from Kentucky, was a connaisseur of the squeezin's. When a still operator was brought before him, the important question was the quality. Producers of poor or contaminated offerings were hit with the full force of the law; if the product was pure, a technicality was invoked or the lightest possible sentence if that couldn't be avoided.
There have always been good and bad moonshiners, a good one is still respected in many parts of the conservative south and southwest.

The long clip by Sawzaw mostly at the moonshine joints that sell illicit liquor as places where guns and drugs are also dealt.

I won't do cut and paste, and I never read it fully out of principle, but a good excerpt from "Pigs Don't Fly" is:
"The Baptists and the Bootleggers," Dec. 2007
http://www/indiauncut.com/iublog/article/the-baptists-and-the-bootleggers/