Lynchburg
At 8:00 AM we got up, then had breakfast and a quick shower, packed the luggage and checked out.
Paola set Garmin (navigation system) to Lynchburg and off we went.
It was a beautiful warm and sunny day. The road trip was quite pleasant, through a stunning landscape of forests, mountains and lakes, heading north. It took us around four hours and a change of time zone (from Eastern to Central) to get to Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg.
We parked the Jeep and went to the visitor centre which is just at the bottom of a hill scattered with big trees. We were lucky as the next guided tour was about to start so we paid the tickets and joined in.
The guide was a huge man dressed as a Tennessee farmer, wearing a jumpsuit and a straw hat. We sat in a room and watched a short video about the history of the distillery. Then we got on a bus which took us to the source of the water which is the quintessential ingredient of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey.
The water springs from a gash in the limestone rocks and is very pure and perfect for making whiskey. We learned that they have currently 64 million gallons of whiskey on storage, shared across 64
buildings scattered around 2000 acres of land. Then we visited the original office of Jack Daniel and finally the production plant. The plant has four mills where they make all Jack Daniels’ whiskey sold around the world. We saw the mills (it’s hot in there dude!) then went upstairs to see the tanks were the fermentation of a mix of corn, barley and rye takes place.
It takes four days to complete the fermentation and three to four days for the distillation. In eight days then the mash turns into whiskey and is barrelled. It takes five gallons of mash to make one gallon of whiskey. After ageing for four to six years the whiskey is then filtered twice through charcoal. This process is called mellowing and gives the whiskey its typical smooth and round taste. We then visited a storage building where on average a million barrells are stored. God, the smell in there was so intense and sooo good!
Our tour finished in the tasting room where we sampled Gentleman Jack, Old No.7 and Single Barrel, guided through a mix of amazing flavours and smells by our veteran guide. We took some more pictures and then headed to historic Lynchburg where we took more photos and had lunch. We bought a fridge magnet in Jack Daniel’s megastore and then jumped back on our Jeep.
Nashville, get ready…we are coming!!!
More pictures here
PS: you won’t believe this, but Jack Daniel’s distillery is actually in a dry county! That means that they can’t sell alcohol to the public. Having said that, they found a way around it. They have a bottle shop
in the visitor centre that sell unique bottles that happen to be full of whiskey. 😉