We took a trip to visit Jack this morning, Jack Daniel that is. We drove into Lynchburg to the distillery where Jack Daniels Old No.7 “Tennessee Sour Mash” whisky has been made since 1866. All the Jack D that is drunk throughout the world comes from this one place in Tennessee, amazing.
Lynchburg itself is a little blip on the side of the road with a few stores around the central square selling everything Jack Daniel’s except the actual whiskey. The county that Lynchburg is in, Moore County is a dry county and as such sales off alcohol are prohibited. Pretty amazing that one of the most recognizable drinks in the world can’t be bought at the place it’s made. At the distillery you can actually buy Jack in a commemorative bottle but that’s the only thing allowed, and the passing of legislation was necessary for that to happen. We saw lots of people leaving the distillery with brown paper bags; it looked like a convention of bums!
The tour of the distillery, which was free, was excellent. We got to learn about the process of whiskey making from start to finish, from the burning of the wood to create the charcoal that they use to mellow the alcohol (it is filtered through 10 feet of charcoal), to the bottling process. We actually got to see them bottling some barrels, as the single barrel whiskey they produce is hand bottled in small batches. We visited the cave where all the iron free water comes from that it used in every barrel, we got to see the mash bubbling away, and smell the stinky pre-barreled smell of Jack from the giant vats. The last stop on the tour was at one of the storage sheds where they keep the barrels of Jack for at least 4 years and sometimes longer; the smell in there was much nicer. It is possible to buy a whole barrel of Jack, if you have a spare $13,000 or so lying about. The guide told us that if we continued on to the White Rabbit Salon we would each get a glass of ‘yellow label’, was he a joker or what. Turns out the Jack Daniel’s Yellow Label is lemonade – in a dry county they couldn’t even give us a sample of Jack!
It was a cool tour, well worth doing, and after we wandered around Lynchburg for about 10 minutes – that was as long as it took. It’s amazing to see what all can be made from used Jack Daniel’s barrels.







Mike: Soo! close, yet soo! far. You can reach out and touch it but you can’t taste it!