Oot & Aboot: Jack lives here

Today I would be visiting the hollowed Jack Daniel Distillery. I’m up early to be picked up by my tour group to head to the small town of Lynchburg. I’m already loving taking tours in Nashville. I mean, where else can you hop onto the bus and watch a DVD of rockabilly artists whilst the tour guide sings along to them! The trip to Lynchburg where the Jack Daniels Distillery is home is about an hour and a half out of Nashville. Luckily I had brought my Ipod. The town of Lynchburg has a population of 360 people and you can safely say that pretty much all of those people work at the distillery. I’m looking forward to this tour as I know next to nothing about how whiskey is created or Jack Daniels.

We get to the Jack Daniels Visitors Centre and I wait for my tour to start. Everyone working at the distillery sounds very southern and wears overalls, it’s all very kitsch. I notice a statue of Jack in the visitors centre and am told that it is life size. I’m amazed because I am slightly taller than Jack. Jack was a short guy and he also never married but had many girlfriends, and more than one at a time. So Jack was a bit of a stud. The tour starts off with a short video giving the background of Jack’s Whiskey. The formula for his whiskey has not changed since he first created it and the process for creating it has barely changed too. Jack’s whiskey has won more awards than any other whiskey in the world and every drop of Jack Daniel’s is created from Lynchburg. They export about 40% overseas. I found it pretty neat that the whiskey I was seeing could end up being served at the Steyne. After the video we hop onto a bus and head to the start of the tour. The tour doesn’t go through the whiskey making process from step A to Z so we learn different pieces in the process depending where we walk to. We start at the area where the charcoal is made. The process that makes Jack’s whiskey a Tennessee whiskey is that the whiskey is poured over a vat of charcoal where it slowly passes through the charcoal to then go into the barrels.

After checking out the charcoal process we have a look at Jack’s original office on the property that has remained the same since his death. What I am amazed by is the size of the distillery. It’s absolutely massive. To put it in perspective, they have about 50 barrel rooms on the property. Within these barrel rooms are seven floors of barrels, about 20,000 barrels per room. That’s a lot of whiskey! The other thing I notice is how much working at Jack Daniels runs in the family. So many employees have brothers, mothers, sisters working at the distillery. The employees also have a real love of what they do and preserving Jack’s legacy. In Jack’s office they have a safe and this safe is infamous, and what ultimately caused Jack’s death. Years prior to Jack’s death he had gotten fed up with the safe and kicked it hard. This led to an infection in his foot which led to blood poisoning, and his eventual death.

We moved on and had a look at the fresh water spring on the property, The water from this spring is used in the process to make the soft mash for the whiskey, which is like a yeast. The distillery ended up where it is because Jack discovered the spring so he bought the spring and the land around it and built his empire. We had a look at pictures of the Master Distillers. I just thought what a cool job that would be. The Master Distiller gets to decide, by tasting, when a whiskey is ready to leave the barrels and get bottled. Niice. I just like the name Master Distiller.

We then have a look at the rooms that create the mash. The smell is very pungent and not all that crash hot. We then move onto a room where you see the whiskey move through the charcoal. Our tour guide lifts the lid of the barrel and the whiskey smell is overpowering. I think if you took a big enough sniff you could feel a bit tipsy. What’s interesting to know is that Lynchburg is a dry county. So basically you can’t drink alcohol. So unfortunately there won’t be any taste testing but I am told you may purchase whiskey later on. Every first Friday of the month every employee gets a bottle of JD to take home, and on holidays…no wonder the employees are so happy.

We move onto the room where the Single Barrel bottles of JD are being put together. Single Barrel JD is taken from the barrels on the top floor of the barrel rooms where they got more heat and the whiskey is smoother. People and companies buy a barrel of JD and their Single Barrel Whiskey will always come from that barrel. After drooling over the Single Barrel Whiskey we went and saw the barrel rooms. There were walls and walls of barrels of whiskey. Waiting to be just right for bottling, which generally takes a couple of years. The barrels are never reused as it may compromise the JD so they get sold or recycled.

We get to the end of the tour and have the opportunity to buy some whiskey. I purchase a special edition JD bottle complete with certificate of ownership. I’m just really hoping it makes it way back home in one piece in my luggage!

After checking out the distillery we head to the town centre of Lynchburg. By town centre I mean a town square of about 12 shops. Of these shops, about 80% are sellers of JD merchandise. I have lunch at the BBQ Caboose café and walk the shops until it’s time for us to leave. We head out an hour after we got there and our tour guide takes us to Jack Daniel’s resting place in the local cemetery.

We make the long trip back to downtown Nashville and I am back in my hotel at 5.30pm. I had planned to head to the closest Wal-Mart to buy the world’s cheapest piece of carry on luggage to help with carrying my crap. So I catch the bus to west Nashville and Wal-Mart. West Nashville is a slummier part of Nashville and there isn’t a whole lot out there. I do end up getting my $20 piece of luggage so I am happy about that. I head back to downtown Nashville and get myself to a Chili’s restaurant to answer my serious fajitas craving for dinner. It had been a long day on the go so I end up heading back to the hotel and hitting the sack early.

What I learnt in Nashville today:

The Nashville bus routes are designed around K-Marts and Wal-Mart’s. It’s very bizarre. You can imagine how fashionable the folks in Nashville are!
You can meet some strange folk on the buses. Like the ex-Marie who was putting can of beer into water bottles to foil people into thinking that maybe he wasn’t a drunk.
The creation of JD is such a process, I have a new found respect for whiskey!