US Road Trip, Part III
16 November 2008 – 4:54 pmJack Daniels Distillery
With a full tank of rare Nashvillian gas, I hit the road again to check out a town in the middle of nowhere and with a population of only 361… Lynchburg, Tennessee.
The tourist center was packed with an eclectic crowd: Harley biker gangs, families, and international tourists from all over the world. All of them just milling around checking out the whiskey making process and waiting for their tour number to be called.
The tour-guide we end up with had worked for the distillery and now in his retirement years gave tours. His quick-wit and knowledge mixed with being a Southern gentlemen made him a great guide.
On the tour, we were shown all the different steps: how they made the charcoal, the spring where the water came from, the distilling process, the filtering process, barrel making, bottling and packing facilities.
While all of the steps were interesting, I have to say I was most impressed by the bottling line. There is a single bottle line for all the Jack Daniels bottles and they bottle and package everything one barrel at a time in a medium-sized room!
During the tour we found out that we wouldn’t be able to sample any of the whiskey. Sadly, Lynchburg is in a dry county and it was illegal to sell or serve any alcohol.
However the tour-guide told us they found a loophole a few years ago. The distillery could sell collector edition bottles because the buyers will likely never drink the alcohol. So technically the buyer is buying the bottle and not the alcohol in it. 
The tour ended in what looked like a homey restaurant bar and we were all served lemonade and hidden in the back corner was a room selling the collector editions.
They were only selling five different runs, three normal bottles of Jack Daniels with scenes from Lynchburg and two award winning years in custom bottles from 1981 and 1954.
After hearing how much they cost, I bought 4 of the 5.
They were about a 1/3 of the cost of what they are online and coming with a seal showing they were bought directly from the distillery only increased there value (I would have bought all of them but the one Lynchburg scene bottle was a little cheesy looking).
It sounded like a good investment to me .
If you’re ever in the Nashville area, the tour is definitely worth the three-plus hours round trip to the distillery.
more to come…
