As I stated yesterday the tour of Jack Daniel's Distillery was a very interesting experience. The employees were extremely nice, the tour wonderfully informative and the smell!!!
There are several different versions of Jack Daniel's life but the most common is both his parents died when he was quite young and that he was one of 13 children. Other bio's say there were 10 children. All records for that time period were destroyed during a court house fire so who knows if the true facts will ever be known. His mother passed away shorty after Jack's birth in 1849. His father remarried and story has it that the step-mother was quite mean to young Jack and after Jack's father was killed in the Civil War, Jack at age 14 ran away to live with a lay minister who took young Jack under his wing. The minister was also a whiskey maker but never took or sold a drink on Sunday. Young Jack learned all he could from the minister and at age 16 struck out on his own, after the minister's wife insisted the minister give up his "moonshine" business. It was an uphill battle for young Jack but eventually he became the country's #1 maker of whiskey. Jack was quite a short man standing only 5'2". This picture of my Jack standing next to Jack's statue makes Jack Daniel look much taller. What you don't see is the pedestal they have Jack Daniel's standing on; it is almost a foot tall.
Jack Daniel never married; never had children. He eventually handed over his business to his favorite nephew, Lem Motlow, who had "a head for numbers." Jack remained involved in the business and one morning CAME TO WORK EARLY which was unlike Jack's normal routine. Jack tried to open the safe that stood in the office and as always could not remember the combination. Finally, after several attempts of trying to open the safe, Jack kicked the safe out of frustration. That kick eventually cost Jack his life. His toe became infected and looking back now they believe he most likely had diabetes which would not permit the infection to heal.
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This is a picture of the actual safe Jack Daniel's kicked which eventually led to his death at age 62.
The moral of this story is to never go to work early; it just may kill you; | | | | | |
Below are some pics we took of the distillery and the town of Lynchburg. One of the first pics you will see is of some wild turkeys that run wild around the distillery. "That, my friends, is the only wild turkey you will see on this property" said our tour guide. It took me a second but I finally got it!
I am going to help Hulio on the rest of this post so we can get it published since we have had some people ask where it was.
The two ingredients that make Jack Daniels different than other whiskey is the spring water, which is why the distillery was located in Lynchburg, and the charcoal which is made on site and is used to filter the whiskey before it is put into barrels that are also made on site and are only used one time.
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| Spring water used in the process |
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| Maple wood stacked for making charcoal |
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| Getting ready to spray it with 140 proof whiskey and burn it to make the charcoal |
This is one of the old fire trucks on the property. I didn't realize this is probably where the band got it's name.
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| This is first warehouse used to stack barrels of whiskey to age it. The have newer warehouses scattered all over the hill side. |
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| Hulio, the super blogger. This is before she sampled the product. |
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| Main ingredients |
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| Downtown Lynchburg. The barrel shop is where furniture and other things are made from the barrels. |
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