GILBERT, W.Va. - After generations of bootlegging, direct descendants of the Hatfields have teamed with the McCoy name to produce legal moonshine in southern West Virginia with the state's blessing - the start of a new legacy for the families famous for their 19th-century feud.
Production of "Drink of the Devil" has been in full swing at a distillery on original Hatfield land, sending batches to the nation's store shelves using the original recipe of family patriarch William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield.
Overseen by Chad Bishop, husband of Hatfield's great-great-great-granddaughter, all the work is done by hand in a converted garage on a mountainside six miles from Hatfield's grave.
After going through fermentation and distilling processes at Hatfield & McCoy Moonshine, the liquor is bottled, corked, and packaged before being shipped to stores in West Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
"This is as close as you'll get to the way it was made 150 years ago," Bishop said.
Among those lending knowledge and elbow grease to the business are Bishop's wife, Amber, and her mother, Nancy Hatfield, the oldest living descendant of "Devil Anse."
Ronald McCoy, a great-great-grandson of McCoy patriarch Randolph "Ole Ran'l" McCoy, was a consultant to the distillery and the testing and marketing effort.
Sold in 25-ounce bottles, moonshine is essentially whiskey that hasn't aged. The business sells between 1,800 and 3,000 bottles each month at $32.99 each.
"I'll be honest. It's just kind of crazy," Amber Bishop said. "We never dreamed that it was ever going to be anything like this."
Considering the families' history, her ancestors probably wouldn't have, either.
The feud between the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky is believed to have begun in the 1870s over a stolen pig and escalated over timber rights. By 1888, at least 12 people had died as a result of the shooting war. The violence ended by 1900, and a truce signed in 2003 marked an official end to the conflict.
Now, in the name of commerce, the families are banding together.
"They really take it very seriously," distillery attorney Greg Chiartas said. "It really is about economic development for them."
After the state passed legislation allowing for regulated moonshine distilleries, Chad Bishop, a former longtime coal miner who also comes from a long line of family moonshiners, acquired the necessary permits in 2012.