9/30/18 Sunday: We thought we might leave by 9:00, but I had nothing packed. So I was up about 8:00, we packed and were pulling away from the marina in our rental car by 10:00. Our first stop was the Huddle House. It’s very much like a Waffle House. I had a layered pile of heart attack: hashbrowns, bacon, patty sausage, egg, cheese, more hashbrowns, topped with sausage country gravy – with a biscuit. We in the South now, y’all!
It was a about a 2.5 hour drive to Lynchburg. We wanted to stay in an Airbnb in Nashville for three nights, but the least expensive and most available nights were Mon-Wed, and this is Sunday. There is a Tennessee Titans NFL game in town today, and also next weekend, which clogs up the availability. So we decided to go to Lynchburg today, then to Nashville tomorrow. Why Lynchburg? You’ll see. We found ourselves being welcomed to Tennessee before long.
There were some very beautiful horse ranches on this drive!
We found Lynchburg – over the hills and through the hollows (that’s hollers in southernspeak).
And then – our destination – we found the Jack Daniel’s Distillery and Visitor’s Center. From the road, it isn’t a huge impressive property. And as we toured it, we found that it is, in fact, not very huge. But every barrel and every bottle of Jack Daniel’s brands of whiskey, worldwide, comes from right here.
We purchased tickets for a tour, and had to wait about 45 minutes until our tour time. This is the little map that they gave us, and we toured around this circle of buildings to learn about Mr. Jack’s (as they call him) way of distillin.
In the waiting area, there were all kinds of great displays about the history of Jack Daniel – the man and the whiskey. About the barrels and the barrel house: The four bottles of whiskey in this picture represent from left to right: white is pure alcohol prior to time in a barrel, the next light color one comes from a barrel at the bottom of the barrel house. The temperature at the bottom does not change severely throughout the year. The next bottle comes from the middle of the barrel house. The darkest color comes from the top of the barrel house. The barrels at the top experience hot summers which expands the liquid and pushes it into the wood of the barrel. The cold of the winter causes the liquid to contract and suck back out of the wood, bringing more sugars out of the charred oak with it. If you were to purchase a “Single Barrel” bottle of whiskey, it could come from anyplace in the barrel house, and have the characteristics of where ever the barrel was located in the house.
I also found this, which answered my curiosity about why “Old No. 7”? No good reason!! It is known worldwide, and Mr. Jack gave this designation to his finest whiskey in 1887, but he never revealed why. There are legends and theories, but according to his own museum, nobody really knows why.
It was very interesting to read and hear about how the distillery survived through 29 years of prohibition! Jack Daniel never married or had any children. His health was failing in 1907, so he transferred ownership of the business to two nephews. Prohibition started in Tennessee in 1910. Mr. Jack died in 1911. One nephew bought out the other, and nephew Lem Motlow ran the distillery for 40 years. It is claimed that he even kept the original yeast alive, year after year, as he anticipated prohibition would come to an end. Prohibition ended federally in 1933. But Tennessee did not end prohibition statewide until 1938. Mr. Lem Motlow’s name can still be found as a tribute of respect for the man who kept Jack Daniel’s distillery and whiskey alive.
We started out the tour up the hill near one of the barrel houses. I don’t remember how many thousands of barrels are in this house. Their barrel houses are spread out around the county, so that if there is a mishap at one, it doesn’t affect the entire inventory. After touring Bourbon country in Kentucky last year, Kenny & I wondered if Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey was aged in barrels. Yep – the whiskey is “matured” (not aged) in new oak charred barrels, just like bourbon, for 4-6 years. Jack’s process is so specific, that they have their own ‘cooperage’ and make their own barrels.
Then we learned what makes Jack Daniel’s to be considered ”Tennessee Whiskey” rather than bourbon. The alchohol is slow dripped into a 14 foot tall barrel of charcoal. The charcoal comes from burned sugar maple wood. In this picture, these piles of wood slats are put under the canopy, and lit on fire. They are burned precisely to result in just the right size of charcoal pieces – about the size of a dime.
The wood won’t burn easily all by itself, and they want to keep the burn pure… so of course, their fire starter is pure alcohol! “Whiskey for Destruction”. The charcoal is gathered up and placed in a giant 14’ tall barrel, and the pure distilled whiskey is dripped through the charcoal. It takes 4-6 days for it to filter down all the way through, which removes some undesirable elements from the alcohol and makes it smoother to the taste.
I don’t know exactly what this was, but thought it was cool.
The other critical element of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey is the water. All of the water used for this whiskey comes from this cave. The water is naturally filtered through limestone, which removes iron from the water. I couldn’t take any pictures while we were inside the distilling building, but the pipes actually said “cave water” on them.
Walking up to the cave felt so good! It was nice and cool air coming out.
This was almost a life size statue of Mr. Jack Daniel: “Jack on the rocks”. He was actually a very short man – I think they said 5’4”, and he wore a size 4 shoe.
The distillery has it’s own fire department. These old trucks were really nice looking antiques!
Mr. Jack’s motto:
The final stop on the tour was a tasting room. YAY!
We started with Gentleman Jack – which was actually developed for the ladies!
We had fun learning how to taste.
Our guide said that we needed to start with swirling the liquid in the cup, and smelling it with your mouth just barely open. Then take just a sip, and hold it in your mouth a bit to try to fire up all four types of tastebuds in your mouth: sweet is on the tip of your tongue – so if you just shoot the shot, you’ll totally miss the sweet. This little taste gets your brain engaged in the program that you’re tasting whiskey. The next taste will be much fuller and you’ll be able to pick out different characteristics. It really did work! Gentleman Jack smelled like really ripe bananas.
That concluded our tour, and then we walked over to the little town of Lynchburg where we went to the retail shop. It was fun to look around, especially at the barrel shop. They had all kinds of things made with and from barrels, since they only use a barrel once.
And we even found some charcoal. Our tour guide told us that when the charcoal starts to get ‘worn out’ filtering the alcohol, they’ll rinse it with water, and that goes into a tank to be re-distilled to extract the alcohol. But then the charcoal will be pressed together with barrel bits to make charcoal briquettes! Nothing is wasted.
Another very interesting tidbit – they mash corn, rye, and barley, which are mixed together with yeast to create the mash. It ferments, and then after the alcohol is extracted, the mash is trucked to nearby ranches and fed to cattle. I don’t remember how many truck loads are hauled out each day, but it is something like 16 semi trucks every day? Cattle are actually brought in to the ranches nearby to get ‘beefed up’, because it’s less expensive to transport the cattle than to transport the huge volume of mash that is generated daily. And regarding the size of the distillery, it really is pretty small when you figure how much Jack Daniel’s there is in the world. I do remember him telling us that they only have enough grain on site at any one time to run for 16 hours. So the trucks run constantly in and out. Production was actually down today while they were doing some scheduled maintenance, so we missed a lot of that activity. Bummer. But it was still a very interesting tour and we really enjoyed it. My favorite taste was the Tennessee Honey. He said it should be chilled and served very cold to taste the best. And it’s quite yummy in lemondade or ice tea. The Tennessee Fire was better than Fireball – it would be really good in some apple cider – or eggnog! It reminded me of fall and the holidays. Oh yea- because we like “fire-nog” at Christmas. 😁
Off to our little hotel for one night, then we’ll go find another distillery tomorrow!
I thought you’d like the Tennesse honey! We bought a bottle, and as our tour guide said, “it’s good over vanilla ice cream!”
Yes! I think it would be!