Yeast will happily metabolize sucrose into alcohol. White sugar is popular among moonshiners as it is cheap and easily available. Winemakers also sometimes bumps the sugar contents of thin grape must by adding white sugar, they call it chaptalization to make it sound fancier.

A fermented sugar wash tastes like shit though as it has none of the nice flavour compounds you get from fruit juice or malt so it has to be distilled and filtered into vodka to be enjoyable.