Thursday, October 29, 2015

HERE & THERE COLUMN


   A Road Trip To Lynchburg, Tn.

  Here & There is on the road again and we're happy to share with our readers a visit we made on Labor Day this year to the interesting town of Lynchburg, Tennessee and a tour of the Jack Daniel Distillery, the oldest registered distillery in the United States established and registered in 1866. 
  Shirley and I enjoyed this trip with our Tennessee brother-in-law Dave Cross and his wife (Shirley's sister) Barbara Cross who make their home in Spring Hill, Tn.
  Of course there are road trips and then there are pilgrimages and this journey truly fits the second category.
  Traveling on two-lane country roads from Spring Hill to Lynchburg also gave us the opportunity to see how Tennessee folks live outside of the urban areas around Nashville.....beautiful country.
  We arrived at the Jack Daniel Distillery visitor center which houses historical information about the science and the history of Jack Daniel's craft.
  We toured the visitor center and then were assigned to a tour guide who showed us the rickyard, the stills, charcoal mellowing and a barrel house which all very clearly taught us what  makes Jack Daniel's a Tennessee Whiskey.
  An interesting note here is that despite being the location of a major operational distillery, Jack Daniel's home county of Moore is a dry county, so the product is not available for consumption at stores or restaurants within the county.
  We were informed that the whiskey meets the regulatory criteria for classification as a straight bourbon though the company disavows this classification and markets it simply as Tennessee whiskey.
  In the personal biography of Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel an interesting note says after Jack's parents died he was taken in by a local lay preacher and moonshine distiller  named Dan Call where he learned the distilling trade....somewhat of an oddity here that Call was both a preacher and distiller.
  The process used by Jack Daniel's is milling and mashing in stages 1 and 2, fermenting and distilling in stages 3 and 4 and mellowing and barreling in stages 5 and 6. We found the mellowing stage very interesting where the whiskey is filtered through what looked like a foot of charcoal. This company makes their own charcoal and also makes their own barrels that the whiskey is stored in....an interesting process. We were not allowed to take pictures in some areas of the distillery.
  Indeed a very educational tour as this distillery has been entered on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
  As Roscoe's Ralph Kirchner use to say..."its worth the trip from anywhere."

                                           
                                                            


The Jack Daniel's company makes their own barrels constructing them with one strip of wood and then adding other strips before adding the metal bands and  they are finished off with burning the inside of each barrel. Each barrel is used only one time for storage of the whiskey. 
  
ADDITIONAL PHOTOS FROM THIS TOUR


                                                         

   
                                                                              


                                                                                  
                             
                                                                            
                                            

                                                                             
                                                                             

                                                                                
                                                                               

                                                                               
                                                                           

                                                                                       
                                                                          
                                                                             
                                                                              
                                                                               
                                                                                 

                                                                            
                                                                           

                                                                              
                                                         

                                                                        

                                                                           

                                                                               

                                                                             

                                                                          

                                                                                 

                                                                          

                                                                            

                                                                              

                                                                            

                                                                                   

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