Jack Daniels distillery tours Nashville

Lynchburg is a study in contrasts, a tiny town with a larger-than-life legacy. It’s here, in this one-stoplight town with only about 6,000 residents, that the biggest and most recognizable whiskey in the world is made. And it’s a must-visit for any whiskey lover. So today we’re headed down to rural Tennessee to tour the iconic Jack Daniel’s Distillery!

A visit to the Jack Daniel’s Distillery highlights Tennessee history and late settler culture. Visitors can choose from a number of guided tour options, from the Angel’s Share Distillery Tour with single-barrel whiskey tastings to a combo tour of the distillery and town of Lynchburg.

Other tasting options include the classic tasting tour, which includes a flight of five whiskeys, and the Mr. Jack Toast in the Hollow Tour, a quick driving tour of Lynchburg followed by a whiskey toast.

Those who aren’t interested in drinking can save money by taking the Dry County tour, which still provides information about the distillery’s history and production process sans alcohol. To avoid the need to find a designated driver, book a tour from Nashville that includes round-trip transportation to Lynchburg and free time in the city to purchase tickets and take a Jack Daniel’s tour.

1. Entrepreneurship at an early age.
Jack was six when his mother passed away, leaving behind Jack and his nine siblings. After clashes with his stepmom, Jack moved into his uncle’s house. He befriended Dan Call, a local Lutheran minister and storekeeper. Dan taught Jack the tricks of running his store, but Jack was more interested in the “still house” on the property. Dan took him under his wing and taught Jack everything there was to know about whiskey. In 1863, Call’s wife made him choose between his ministry or his whiskey business after hearing a sermon on the evils of alcohol. So, Call sold the whiskey still to his mentee, Jack, a mere boy at 13 years of age.

2. 56 degrees and flowing.
As Jack Daniel’s popularity began to seep through the area, he searched for a new distillery location. He found a tract of land in Lynchburg with an abundance of sugar maple trees and a cave containing an iron-free, flowing spring. The spring and Call’s charcoal mellowing process is what sets Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey apart from the rest.

JD Status3. “Every day we make it, we’ll make it the best we can.”
That was Mr. Jack’s main mantra. To became a true Tennessee Whiskey and not a bourbon, the whiskey goes through a charcoal mellowing process before maturation. For 10 to 12 days, the whiskey drips through 10 feet of tightly-packed vats of homemade sugar-maple charcoal. This “Old Lincoln County Process” gave Jack Daniel’s its distinct, smooth, refined flavor. The recipe and process have remain unchanged since 1866.

4. No dates needed.
Jack Daniel’s felt dates shouldn’t dictate when a batch was ready. Instead, it was determined by look, taste and smell. More than a century later, a batch of whiskey or individual barrel isn’t deemed mature enough to bottle until it passes the lips of the master tasters.

5. The mysterious Number 7.
There are many rumors surrounding the name of Jack’s iconic product. As the notorious town bachelor, it was rumored that Jack had seven girlfriends. Others say the number-seven train carried his barrels. Others believe he lost a batch of a whiskey for seven years and named it Old No. 7 when he found it. However, the true story was buried with Jack Daniels.

6. Cue the music.
Jack understood marketing. In 1892, Jack decided the town of Lynchburg needed a town band. With $227 and a Sears and Roebuck catalog, Jack outfitted 13 of his employees and fellow community members with nickel-plated instruments and uniforms. The Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band became quite popular in the region. They drew quite the crowd in downtown Lynchburg, across from Jack’s two newly constructed saloons—The White Rabbit and Red Dog.

7. Free whiskey, anyone?
The Jack Daniel Distillery is the only place in the world where you get free whiskey. After Prohibition, Moore County stayed a dry county. Lem Motlow, Jack’s nephew and eventual predecessor, became a state senator shortly after Prohibition. Under his term, he passed a law that allowed whiskey to be manufactured, but not sold, in Moore County. The Jack Daniel’s gift shop is the only place in Moore County where “decorative bottles” of alcohol can be purchased.

JD Distillery (Exterior)8. Baudoinia compniacensis.
The trees on Jack Daniel’s property and surrounding area sprout green leaves, yet their bark is a deep black. This phenomenon isn’t natural, but a fungus. This fungus feeds off the ethanol that is released in the air from the distillation and aging processes. During Prohibition, government revenue agents used this bark to catch moonshiners in Tennessee.

9. Tiny Town. Big Impact.
Lynchburg, TN is a quiet, one-traffic-light town that receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. It only has 365 residents, while the Jack Daniel’s Distillery employees 371 people. The distillery never has sick employees on the first Friday of the month when their employees receive their paychecks and a bottle of whiskey.

10. Going to work early kills.
Lem Motlow maintained the distillery’s books and kept them locked up in a safe. Jack arrived early to work and needed to access the safe. In a fit of frustration of not remembering the safe’s combination, Jack gave it a swift kick and broke his big toe. Infection slowly moved its way up his leg, eventually killing him six years later on October 10, 1911. Ironically, a splash of his own product would have saved him.

Jack Daniel’s was officially founded in 1866, when a 16-(ish)-year-old Mr. Jack registered his distillery with the government. He was the first to do so, which makes Jack Daniel’s the oldest registered distillery in the country.

Jack is such a huge brand that some people assume the distillery is just a showplace, and there’s a massive factory somewhere else…but the opposite is true. And more than 300,000 people a year make the trek out to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere to see where every drop of Jack Daniel’s comes from.

What’s even crazier is that Moore County (where the distillery and Lynchburg are located) has been a dry country since 1909, when the state went into its own Prohibition. While they got an exception in 1995 to taste a small amount on the tour, to sell at the bottle shop, and to gift to employees, you can’t buy alcohol anywhere else in the county to this day.

Who was Jack Daniel?

Yes, Jack was a real dude!  Jasper Newton Daniel was born somewhere around 1850 (give or take a year or two…record-keeping wasn’t the best).  As a child he left home and was taken in by the Reverend Dan Call.  Here, with the Call family, he learned to make whiskey from an enslaved man named Nearest Green.

He bought the whiskey distillery from Reverend Call around age 13, and registered it a few years later (the first in the nation to do so).  He brought Nearest (now free) with him as effectively the company’s first master distiller, though that title didn’t really exist until much more recently.

When Jack moved the operation to the Cave Hollow (where it is today) in the 1880s, Nearest didn’t want to move, but his sons George and Eli went with Jack.  To this day, the distillery’s workforce has multiple generations of various families working there, and has had a Green family member working at the distillery since the time of Nearest (you can learn more about it here if you’re interested).

Jack was quite a fascinating person himself…only 5’2″ tall and a dapper dresser, he had many female “friends” but never married (the distillery was passed on to his nephew, Lem Motlow).  I’ve been reading “Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel” and if you really want to know more about him, I highly suggest it!