>>The pálinka is the hungarian word for it; romanian would be ţuica (tsuika). We call it rakija, but mostly each kind has its own name, derived from the fruit. Except that for višnjevača (the sour grape brandy) it takes some explanation: "it's not bad brandy into which you throw a bunch of sour cherries to fix the taste, it's the brandy FROM sour cherries", because the same word describes both.
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>Thanks for the linguistic education.
>I became aware of it when my Romanian friend's buddy, a farmer, kept disappearing behind his barn to sell pálinka to his other visitors :)
>I wonder if it was more profitable than his chickens and pigs?

In the horrible year of 1993, when we had exponential exponential inflation, when common salary came down to about 2$/month, my dad was making brandy. A liter of grape brandy would go for 1,50$ (assuming the then ratio of 2DEM=1USD), apricot for 3,50 and quince for 6,50 and there was no haggling. The sales were steady.

And for a real peasant it's not an industry, i.e. one thing you specialize in. These things require periods of attention and a lot of waiting, so you do other things in the meantime. For brandy, you get busy a few days in the spring (if you believe in pruning and pesticides, that is), a couple of days when you pick it, then few minutes a day to check on the process and make sure you catch the right time to distill it, then a few hours at the still and that's it. It really doesn't take much off your time. So you do chickens and pigs meanwhile.