Are the Poles as obsessed with cherries as the Hungarians? Before we moved we had Hungarian neighbours and whenever we went round for dinner they would serve us cold cherry soup, which looked like pink emulsion paint but was almost a point of family pride. The cherry liqueur sweets are good though and I always bring back a couple of boxes when I visit Hungary.
On illicit hooch, there's a place I could show you not far from my home where it's being distilled on a scale that would provoke a national scandal if discovered; it's nothing new and I suspect it's as widespread as cannabis farms. Nothing to do with Lithuanians or any other east-Europeans; this is just a local tradition.