Jack Daniels - 30.09.2015

One of our stops on the way to Nashville was a visit to Jack Daniels Whiskey Distillery at Lynchberg.  We turned off the highway 24 at a lovely town called Manchester in Coffee County. It was a beautiful, small place with a main road full of well maintained detached houses, with neat open frontages; a prosperous place with lots of banks and finance companies. There was a large area with lots of cars a parked which could mean lots of people in jobs around the car park. The next couple of turns took us into Jack Daniels.
Jack Daniels is in the second smallest dry county. You buy the bottle and get the whiskey free. We drew into the coach park and saw a large beautiful house slightly raised with well kept front gardens.
Jack Daniels Whiskey Distillery at Lynchberg was much more interesting than I thought it would be. It was a much bigger operation than Jameson's in Southern Ireland, well the bit of Jameson's they take you round anyway. Jack Daniels was spread over (142 acres) a large garden area. It was large enough to hold 87 barrel houses. Each barrel house is 7 story's high and contains a million galleons of whiskey. The cave on the grounds surrounds the spring which is the reason Jack chose Lynchberg for his whiskey business. The water is very pure and special, 2,000 barrels of water are taken a day from the spring.
Jack Daniels is the oldest and first Whiskey Distiller to register for Tax (1866, during the Civil War). Jack's real name was Jasper Daniels and when he was 3 a neighbour used to let him watch while he made moonshine. Jack (a short adult man of 5ft 3inches) started producing good whiskey in his teens and was already earning when   his father died, leaving him to raise his step sister Belle. His sister and later her family lived with Jack until his death at 61 in 1911. Jack's nephew Lem Motlow, Belle's son, inherited the business. He had been running the business with Jack for many years and was not there to help Jack open the safe one morning. Jack got very frustrated and kicked the safe, broke a toe and refused medical assistance. If only he had put his foot in his own whiskey he may not have developed gangrene and died.
The company continued with Lem following Jack's way of doing things as far as possible. Lem went on to have 5 children, his 4 sons inherited but sold to Brown Foreman in 1956 for an amount equal to  £300 million dollars today. Lem's daughter is the only one left now and she is 103. The 142 acre site is now worth 2,500 dollars per acre, which was about a years salary for Jack back in his day.

A Life Size Statue of Jack Daniels

The Spring provides 2,000 barrels of pure water a day.