All about Jack Daniel's

Famously, Jack Daniels calls their core product line Tennessee Whiskey.

The legal requirements for a spirit to be called “Tennessee Whiskey” are for all intents and purposes identical to the legal requirements to be called Bourbon with two additional: it must be made and aged in the state of Tennessee and it must undergo the “Lincoln County Process” of filtration.

This filtration process involves running the finished spirit through charcoal made from sweet maple wood. All Tennessee Whiskies are Bourbons, but not vice-versa. Jack Daniels is the biggest selling Whiskey brand in the world. It jumped to super-stardom in the 1950s, when Frank Sinatra proclaimed it “Nectar of the Gods, baby!”

Some of the interesting production differences for Jack Daniels include; very dark “alligator” char barrels, 4-to 6-day drip filtration through ten feet of those hard sweet maple charcoal chips, and an important three-step cooking process for the different grains in the mash bill.

The result is a relatively sweet and smooth dram with dark caramel notes and a warm, agate color.

All about Jack Daniel's distillery

The history of Jack Daniel’s Distillery is very interesting and often disputed. Even though the Whiskey labels and official history of the company list a founding date of “1866,” historians have proved that the distillery was registered and founded in 1875, financed by an inheritance that Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel received that very year.

But prior to that he was working side-by-side with a moonshiner. Jack's early distilling days may have attributed to the mythological 1866 date. With the distillery located in Lynchburg, Tennessee, Jack Daniel’s is the top-selling brand of American Whiskey in the world. 

Nearly 100 million bottles of the core “black label” bottles of Jack Daniel’s are produced and sold each year, with millions more sold across their range of products. Even though their Whiskey meets the legal definition of Bourbon, they adhere to the more stringent requirements.

They call themselves a “Tennessee” Whiskey and follow the so-called “Lincoln County Process” which includes filtering the finished distillate through sugar-maple charcoal prior to aging.

Distillery info