Remember the Baldwin sisters? The old ladies who made “The Recipe”? Did they know they were making moonshine? It seems like they only make it to keep up their father’s tradition, and they I don’t remember seeing them drinking it.
They did, though they probably wouldn’t have called it that. They even profited from it. There was one episode where revenuers dismantled their father’s still and they asked to keep the coil for “sentimental reasons” since it reminded them of Papa, and being sweet pitiful old ladies they were allowed to keep it. But, really, (in the episode) it was to use on their other still, so they could even be canny enough to con the Feds.
Early on, it seems that they thought “The Recipe” was a medicinal concoction, that had nothing to do with Demon alcohol (and all their neighbors didn’t want to break the news to them), but if you’re right about the later episode, then I guess they did figure it out. Either way, they did drink the stuff from time to time - it’s medicinal! The Waltons Wiki (of all things) says nothing useful on the subject (as far as I can tell in a quick search)
A bit off topic, but many years ago Mary Jackson (Miss Emily Baldwin- the grey haired one) was on a reunion show on one of the morning talk shows with other cast members and told a great story. Many years after the series ended she was on vacation in NYC and was sitting on a subway with her traveling companions when a Hispanic youth who was with some other Hispanic youths (I won’t say gang, but that was the implication of how she perceived it) started watching her intently. She became nervous (a bunch of old ladies v. a possible street gang), especially when a seat near her emptied and the teenager sat in it and began asking her something in Spanish, which she didn’t speak. She kept saying “I’m sorry, I can’t tell what you’re asking for…”, so one of his friends leaned over and translated for him:
“He wants to know did Ashley Longworth ever come back?”
She said that the kid was a huge fan of the show and that they couldn’t have been nicer to her, even escorting her and her companions when they had to switch trains.
PS- Earl Hamner talked once about the real people he based the Waltons characters on- mostly his brothers and sisters of course, and a few charactes (Ike and Cora Beth and the guest stars and others) were mostly fictional, but he said that the “real” Baldwin sisters were two widowed hillbilly sisters who were good people and generous and everybody loved them, but they were out and out “no bones about it” moonshiners and bootleggers; it was how they made their living. The series added the Arsenic & Old Lace component of making them old money socialites. I’ve wondered if this was directly inspired by the early Andy Griffith episode about the two spinster moonshiners (which some googling reveals was entitled Alcohol and Old Lace).
An interesting thing about the Hamners (the real Waltons) is that Hamner’s mother was only 16 when he was born and was ancestrally Italian (descended from several Italian families imported by Jefferson to boost Virginia’s vineyards).