Last Saturday @cowgirljesse came down from Lexington, Kentucky and we traveled to the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Established in 1866, Jack Daniel’s is the oldest registered distillery in the United States. Tours are given every day, and let me first say, NO there were no samples given because Moore County, Tennessee is a dry county.
During the last two weeks of September and the first week of October, the distillery shuts down for cleaning and maintenance, so we did not get to see whiskey being made, but we did have a tour of all the facilities. We smelled the 140 whiskey being filtered through the charcoal, saw the barns full of barrels, and even the safe that killed Jack Daniel. However, I did miss seeing the distiller’s grains that eventually make it to my cattle’s feed bunk. (Yeah I did ask the tour guide where they kept the cow feed.)
- The distillery is located on 1,800 acres with 77 barrel-houses, containing an inventory of over 1 million gallons of whiskey in each house.
- It takes 5 gallons of mash for every 1 gallon of whiskey produced. Now that is a lot of cattle feed!
- The only three grains included in Jack’s recipe are corn, barley, and rye.
- Jack Daniel’s makes all of their own barrels from white oak.
- Jack’s whiskey is filtered through 10 feet of packed charcoal (from maple wood) before barreling (Gentleman’s Jack is filtered again before bottling) before being barreled. This is what sets it apart from scotch or bourbon.
- A barrel of whiskey (Jack’s Single Barrel; approximately 240 750ml bottles) can be purchased for somewhere close to $10,000. Yes, the barrel comes with the whiskey.
We could not take any photos in the production areas (still confused on that one), but here are a few of the buildings on the premises.
