About an hour north of Huntsville is Lynchburg, Tennessee, home to the Jack Daniels Distillery. Road trip time to see some genuine Americana…

The person we know as Jack Daniels real name is Jasper Newton Daniel, Jack was his nickname. He was introduced to distilling by Dan Call, a preacher who took Jack in after he ran away from home to get away from a step-mother he despised. When the preacher was challenged to pick either the whiskey or saving people he chose the latter and sold the distillery to Jack for $25. Jack was only 13 when the transaction occurred. He worked at perfecting the recipe and his whiskey became world famous when it won a gold medal at the 1906 St. Louis World’s Fair beating out larger competitors. The rest is history as the saying goes.

The distillery tour itself was quite nice. The grounds are quite well maintained and we were given a very detailed tour including the cave from which the water used originates, how they create the charcoal for filtering,  the distillation & filter process to coopering, storage and bottling. They claim it takes 6 days for  a single drop of whiskey to work is way from the top of the charcoal filter to the bottom.

The distilling was quite interesting to watch, two 40,000 gallon stills full of potential JD. Both were boiling, one was heated but the other was natural processes underway producing gases and heat. Looked like a full boil. And the aroma could clear your sinuses in an instant! Best description I heard was warm smelling salts. Having never had a nose full of salts I do not know if the comparison is accurate, all I know is I got closer for a cautious look and even from a distance the aroma made me jump. Took me hours to clear it out of my head…

Sorry no pictures allowed to be taken in the buildings…

At the end of the tour we had a tasting we had a chance to sample some of the product. We had Old No. 7 which the distillery is best know for, Gentleman Jack’s which is a smoother whiskey having been charcoal filtered more and Single Barrel where all the whiskey came from one barrel. Kim and I liked the Single Barrel and Gentleman Jack’s over the original. But overall we were not whiskey converts. Sorry Jack. However the tour was great and a good time was had by all.

Lynchburg was quite surprising in that it is a very small town even though it is home to a world famous product. I think part of the help is the town is still very far off the beaten track. Despite all the fame it still has only one stop light (which we got caught at) and when the 5pm tolls out from the clock in the town square the town closed down. A very pleasant place to visit. And yes the distillery is famously located in a dry county, however our guide told us that most people don’t really care and changing the county from dry just has never gone up for a vote. He said he really believes that having the distillery in a dry county makes great marketing for the area and that is the real reason it has never changed. Makes sense to me.

Jack was not the only famous face we saw in Lynchburg. While we were walking into town an SUV drove by and the man in the passenger seat gave me a casual wave. Turns out that the town is also the current home of Richard Wayne Penniman aka Little Richard.