Danielle Parton revives her family’s bootlegging past with a feminine touch.
Courtesy Danielle Parton
Danielle Parton says she first “tasted the medicine” at age 5 or 6.
For kindergartener Danielle Parton, having a famous aunt who performed on TV was nothing out of the ordinary—until a classmate set her straight. “I’ve always looked a whole lot like she does at every stage of our lives,” says Parton. “When we were kids at the same age, it’s almost sometimes a mirror image.”
So when the little boy bluntly announced, “She looks a lot like Dolly except …” then stared at her chest, Parton says, “I remember thinking, ‘I’m 5. I’m pretty sure my Aunt Dolly didn’t have boobs when she was 5.’ That’s when I started really noticing that she was looked at in a different way.”
Spirited, straight-shooting and, like her beloved aunt, just downright fun, 47-year-old Parton now splits her time between flying planes for a major commercial airline, serving in the Air National Guard and running her one-woman entrepreneurial show, Shine Girl, a small-batch moonshine company she founded in her hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee, in 2022. With uncommon flavors like rose´, lavender, coconut and the bestselling red velvet cake, Parton’s high-proof liquor tastes nothing like the bootlegged potable her family made decades ago.
“That stuff kind of tasted like I imagine kerosene to taste,” she says. “I have a strict policy I don’t like to suffer when I eat, when I drink.”
Filled with wanderlust as a kid, Parton wondered where every airplane she saw was headed and dreamed of traveling there too. After earning a business degree in 1998 (she was the first female in the family to finish college), she says, “It didn’t take me long to figure out working 9 to 5 in a regular job was not for me. I just couldn’t stand the monotony of the same thing every day.”
Thanks to the connections of an American Airlines driver who often drove Dolly to the airport in Dallas, Parton landed a job as a flight attendant.
Early on, one thing was obvious, she says. “Pilots and flight attendants had the exact same lifestyle but somebody had a much better job, and it was not me.” When she asked about becoming a pilot, co-workers advised her to spread her wings with the Air National Guard.
Courtesy Danielle Parton
Parton has deployed to Kuwait and Afghanistan as a pilot for the Air National Guard.
That suited her just fine, especially since she’d been based in New York City during the September 2001 attack on the Twin Towers.
“The events of 9/11 just had such a profound effort on me and I wanted to be part of the history of trying to protect our nation,” she says.
In the National Guard, Parton learned to fly C-130s and C-5s and was deployed twice to Afghanistan, twice to Kuwait, where she piloted fighter jets in mountains so tall “there were always rocks in the sky and you were never out of danger of hitting something. We did get shot at. I’ve hauled Taliban prisoners. I’ve hauled special operations.”
But her proudest military moment, she quips, “is making a brigade of Marines vomit in the back of the airplane.”
Back home in Tennessee in 2014, Parton was driving from Nashville to Sevierville after her first training session with a major commercial airline (she’s not supposed to say which one, she notes) when she passed a billboard for a line of moonshine made by a high school classmate and thought, “Oh man, that is such a great idea. Good for him.”
Then came the light bulb moment: Somebody should make her family’s recipe. That day, Parton started developing a trademark—aiming to license the brand, she had no intention of running a distillery—but quickly discovered her ancestors didn’t pass down any tried-and-true instructions.
Back in the day, Parton’s great-grandfather, a part-time deputy named Wiley Noland, sometimes helped shut down the stills even though he owned one himself. Her Papaw Lee Parton tended one too, as a way to supplement his family’s income. But, says Parton, “My guess is they probably drank more than they sold.”
She remembers tasting the “medicine” when she was just 5 or 6.
“Different relatives would give us a spoonful here or there. They would say that it was because we were sick. I think they were just trying to knock us out so we’d shut up and go to sleep.”
Determined to re-create the Parton moonshine legacy—minus the throat-burning—she bought her first still from Amazon and taught herself how to make it. The first batch turned out to be vinegar. The second try wasn’t much better. By the third time, Parton was making mash suitable for fermentation.
But no one showed interest in licensing her brand, so when she learned about a failed distillery for sale, she took the entrepreneurial leap even though the building was in terrible shape. Finally, after eight years of preparation and trial-and-error, in March of 2022 the Shine Girl bottle shop opened at the shared space and began offering on-site tastings.
Parton does everything herself, blending and bottling the moonshine, managing the business, even driving a forklift, all while maintaining her airline and Air National Guard careers.
“I’m the only one that knows the formulas,” she says.
While researching ways to differentiate her product, she learned that women make 70% of the decisions about distilled spirits purchases in the U.S. But most liquor is marketed to men. To stand out from the competition, she chose pink—her favorite color—for her moonshine labels and came up with novel flavors that can be used as mixers in a variety of cocktails. At first, some male buyers pushed back: You got anything without “girl” on it? Where are the bottles that aren’t pink?
“[When they say that] I’m like, ‘I love pink on a man,’” Parton jokes. “You’d be surprised how much pink stuff I can sell a man with that line.” On the flip side, girl dads often thank her for setting an example for their daughters, especially in such a male-dominated field.
Fortunately for Parton, perseverance has paid off with a loyal customer following.
“I think a lot of people have good ideas and will put some effort into starting something, but they give up when it gets tough. I’m just too darn stubborn to give up. I just will not quit.”
And to those planning a visit to her store, says the unpretentious Parton, “Don’t be shy. You can ask me anything you want. I’ll answer if I feel like it and I’ll make something up if I don’t.”
Danielle Parton’s 3 Favorite Things About Her Hometown (Sevierville, Tennessee)
Her heritage. “My family has been a part of this place for a couple of hundred years. You can look up my family however long you want to look them up.”
It’s a family town. “I love that regardless of what’s going on in the world, this is still a very family-oriented place, whether it’s geared towards tourism or just in general. Football is still a big thing every Friday night, and when football season is over, we’re going to play high school basketball.”
The natural beauty. “Gosh dang it, it’s just the prettiest place on earth. I’ve been everywhere and there’s nothing prettier than our mountains in the fall.”
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2024 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!