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On June 1st, 2023 m’lady and I woke up early. We were in our tent, which we had pitched in southern Tennessee just as the sun had been setting on the previous night. Our flight from St. John’s to Nashville had arrived a couple of hours late so after picking up our luggage (comprised of a bare-minimum amount of camping gear stuffed into two large suitcases) and our rental car, stopping at a gas station/Subway for chips, beers, and dinner-to-go, completing the hour+ drive to Henry Horton State Park and setting up camp we only had enough time and energy left for a couple of quickly-warming beers and as much Subway as we could swallow before the two-and-a-half hour time-change, jet lag, and good old exhaustion claimed us both as willing victims. We fell into bed so hard neither of us started noticing how woefully under-inflated the air-mattress was until four or five in the morning. Every little toss and turn became magnified until it felt like we were sleeping in a bouncy castle.
Or, more accurately, not sleeping,
After listening to the growing din of the dense forest outside we gradually giggled ourselves into proper consciousness and pulled ourselves out of our sleeping bags. M’lady took the car and found us coffees and mini-doughnuts at a gas station near the highway and after “breakfast” we immediately embarked on a hike. We marched a few miles up and down Duck River which, it turns out, is the most biologically diverse river in North America, with over two hundred different species of critters living in the water. And that doesn’t count all the mammals that thrive on the shores of the river, including the deer (plural) that we saw.
But that’s not what I’m here to type to you about. No, I’m here to tell you about our tour of the world-famous Jack Daniel distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, which was quite awesome.
So we finished our hike and packed up camp in the already-hot Tennessee sun, took a leisurely walk around the campground and checked out their small-but-interesting aviary full of rescue-birds, I took advantage of the well-appointed facilities and enjoyed a quick and wonderful shower and we still got on the road well before 10am; 9:30 even. Early enough that we made it to the distillery with plenty of time to make our 10:45 tour.
(The tours book up fast. Several weeks earlier it had occurred to us that we’d be passing Lynchburg on our way to the King Gizzard concerts at The Caverns, so we hopped online and found most of the distillery tours that day [this day] already sold out. After spending a few hours figuring out lunch/skeet shooting plans and deciding which style of tour we wanted our first two choices had sold out from underneath us, so when we saw passes available for the 10:45 tour we jumped on them like they were Springsteen tickets.)
Just seconds after passing the “Welcome to Lynchburg” sign we were at Jack Daniel’s place (Lynchburg is small). The large parking lot was already packed so we parked across the street in a much larger overflow lot. We shunned the shuttle bus that trucks people back and forth across the street and made our way on our own little legs. After a short, comfortable wait the tour began.
Our guide was Jacob. He had been doing this for a long, long time and he had his job down pat. He spoke fast enough that he was sometimes hard to understand but he was happy to take questions, so I think I got it all. For example:
-Jack’s real name was Jasper Newton Daniel. There is no “S” at the end of his surname, which is kind of obvious when you think about it but I hadn’t though about it, so l found it quite off-putting.
-Nobody knows exactly when Jack Daniel was born.
-Jack was short. Like five-foot-nothin’ or so.
-On the last Friday of every month every employee at the distillery is given a 40oz bottle of Jack Daniel’s (and a lot of people work there).
-Jack had nine siblings and three half-siblings. He was the youngest of the brood and he left home to go live with a neighbour when he was still just a little boy, aged around six years or so.
-Nobody knows what the whole “Old No. 7” thing is about. When I enquired about it fast-talking Jacob threw out a hundred different possibilities before responding to my ruffled brow with a shrug.*
-A slave named “Nearly” Green taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.
-The reason Jack Daniel’s whiskey is not bourbon is because it is filtered through charcoal. (And no, it’s not bourbon, and the bottle makes no claim that it is. It’s “Tennessee whiskey”)
-Each whiskey barrel is used only once.
-Jack never married and he didn’t have any kids. When Jack Daniel died his sole heir was a favourite nephew.
-All of Jack Daniel’s whiskey is made in Lynchburg, in fact it is all made from the same river, which is in a cave. That surprised me. I really thought they licensed it out to different producers but no, they don’t.
-Jack Daniel was notorious for arriving to work late, and why not? After all, he owned the place. However, one day he was preparing to travel out-of-state so he went to work early to retrieve some money from his safe. Unfortunately, his business partner was prone to changing the safe’s combination so Jack couldn’t open it, and since he’d arrived so early there was nobody else in the office to help him. In frustration, Jack kicked the safe, breaking his toe in the process. This injury gave him gangrene and six years later (after having his toe amputated, then his foot, then his lower leg, and then finally having his entire leg cut off, and this in the era before anesthetic) it killed him.
Our guide Jacob had some really odd mannerisms. Anytime he said a number – any number – he’d pretend to count quickly up to that number on his fingers. Whether he’d said the number 1 or the number 1,000,000 he would invariably end up with three fingers raised. “That building has [flip flip flip] seven floors and each floor holds [flip flip flip] 2,000 barrels which is a total of [flip flip flip] 14,000 barrels of whiskey. And there are over [flip flip flip] 200 buildings just like it here on the grounds, so there are almost [flip flip flip] three million barrels of whiskey on site at any time…” And he illustrated every number by raising three fingers.
Also, whenever he said the phrase “Jack Daniel’s” he would slap the JD logo on the breast pocket of his shirt. He said “Jack Daniel’s” a lot. His left breast must have a callous.
And finally – and this was weird – whenever he said almost anything he would bring two fingers to his lips and the flip his hand forward, like he was using sign language. I mean he did this nonstop. It didn’t bother me at all, I just found it odd and maybe a bit jarring. It occurred to me later that he probably has Tourette’s.
Our group of twenty or so spent a lot of time with Jacob. We walked through the barrel houses, we saw the charcoal fire, we visited the cave from which springs ALL the water they they use to make ALL their whiskey (and always have), we had a look at that infamous safe in Jack’s old office, we saw a video of people making the barrels (which looked like a really fun job), we watched line workers labelling bottles (everything seemed to be done by hand; I didn’t see a single robot anywhere), and then finally Jacob hosted our Jack Daniel’s tasting session.
Timing-wise, the most convenient tour for us to take was the Angel’s Share tour. This meant that when Jacob led us into the tasting room at the end of the tour we were met with tables set up with five mini-shots of the distillery’s most exclusive and expensive offerings, the single-barrel whiskeys.
Okay, the first shot was just regular old No. 7 but the other four were upscale: Sinatra Select, Single Barrel Select, Single Barrel Proof, and Single Barrel Rye.
The single-barrel’s are called that because they are exactly that: whiskey’s extracted from a single, uniquely blended barrel. Y’see, regular Jack Daniel’s is a mix of countless barrels of whiskey all mixed together, which adds to its uniformity. However, the whole idea behind the single-barrel concept is to swap “uniformity” for “singularity”, offering up a unique experience with every unique, hand-built barrel.
I refer to the samples as “mini-shots” because the distillery is notoriously in a “dry” county, so the most liquor they are allowed to give a person is a total of three ounces (or was it two?). So the shots were tiny. Like, Hallowe’en “Fun Size” chocolate bar tiny. As a matter of fact, the only reason the distillery can get away with selling whiskey in their gift shop is because the are strictly special blends and are considered “souvenir” bottles. As a result, the gift shop was stacked with exclusive bottles that you don’t tend to find in your average liquor store, including several of the single-barrel varieties.
Unfortunately we were on our way to a music festival that claimed no glass would be allowed onsite so we bought nothing. We wanted to buy everything.
After the tour we walked down a short, pretty trail to the centre of tiny Lynchburg where we had reservations at Bobo’s. Back in the day Bobo’s was a family-run inn and restaurant and Jack Daniel would dine there frequently. Long story short: the distillery eventually bought the place and though Bobo’s is no longer an inn it remains a very popular spot for tourists (like us) to enjoy a fabulous family-style southern meal.
Each room sported a single large round table around which sat ten guests and a talkative, friendly host. The spinning centre of each table was laden with countless delicious delicacies – collared greens, chicken pie, fried okra, whiskey-soaked apples, ribs, slaw, and sweet potato pie for dessert. It was all so excellent as was our host, who chatted the town’s entire history while we marvelled at the food.
After lunch we stopped into the local “hardware store” which is now a large Jack Daniel’s merchandise store. If we weren’t getting on an airplane at the end of the trip we would’ve bought an empty whiskey barrel for sure (price: +/- $200US). After a half-hour of perusing all I bought was a single postcard (priced ridiculously low, like 35¢ or something), which I mailed to myself the next day from the post office in Pelham.
And if you think that was a day, well, we were only just getting started! Up next was a lively drive through pretty countryside that led us to the Caverns, where we would be spending the next four nights in the company of a group of cocky upstarts from Australia called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
But that’s a bunch of other stories, isn’t it?
*It’s probably similar to the claim that is stamped on every Heinz ketchup bottle: “57 Varieties”. There are not fifty-seven varieties of ketchup, Heinz or other kinds. It was pure marketing; simply a made-up phrase that (somehow) made the product stand apart from the competition.
Todd Man Out 