These days, many people consider bourbon the South’s spirit of choice. But long before Southerners were sipping corn whiskey, they enjoyed glasses of locally made fruit brandy. During the colonial and antebellum years, planters routinely set aside acres for orchards—not just to fill pies, but to fill their copper pot stills, too. As late as 1872, there were more than 1,800 active brandy distilleries in the Southern states, the majority in Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

These days, it seems, you can Southernize any dish with a scoop of pimento cheese. Cooks plop it atop steaks at white-tablecloth bistros and slather it on fried green tomatoes at corner cafés. Burgers are where the real action is. Restaurants kick out towering $12 affairs that layer pimento cheese onto fresh-ground sirloin, slide the whole thing on a brioche bun, and top it with chunky housemade ketchup