Jack Daniel's Tour

We got up to cloudy skies but it was already 55 degrees. As we were driving south from Murfreesboro toward Chattanooga, we saw a sign advertising Jack Daniel's Distillery tours. We decided that might be interesting so we drove more than 50 miles out of our way. The grounds were gorgeous.

The tour was fascinating - basically, the mash (corn, oats, rye, and water) is made and stored; the fumes are cooled into liquid (bourbon); the liquid is seeped through charcoal (Tennessee whiskey); the whiskey is stored in toasted barrels (Jack Daniel's whiskey). The water that is used is cave water filtered through limestone - it was rather cool back in that cave!

We saw the rickyard where they make the charcoal. We were in buildings watching the whole process but photography was not allowed inside of production buildings - part of the Homeland Security change in their tour procedures a few months ago.

We found the background story very interesting and learned lots of trivia such as Jack Daniel, nee Jasper Newton Daniel, was only 5'2" tall and wore a size 4 shoe! He had a general belief and it appeared in various buildings:

"Every day we make it, we'll make it the best we can"

At the end of the tour, we all got shots of the "Yellow Brand". Moore County is one of 4 dry counties in Tennessee. So even though they can make whiskey there, they can't sell it there! Anyway, their "Yellow Brand" is lemonade and it tasted good! Oh yeah - our picture will be on the Jack Daniels website in a couple of weeks.

Our side trip took about 4 hours but it was fun. We arrive in Chattanooga later in the afternoon. We went downtown for dinner tonight and a visit to Ben and Jerry's for ice cream. There are various brick structures in the River District - the one in front of Ben and Jerry's is this couch. We didn't meet the people sitting there.

We were told that the River District has really grown in the past two years. We will be back there tomorrow to see the Tennessee Aquarium.