This morning was cool and bright. Matt grabbed fruit and a sweet pastry from the breakfast table and then we set out to explore Lynchburg. We had toyed with the idea of booking tour tickets for Jack Daniels Visitor Centre online but decided to take a bimble through the town, after picking up tickets we returned to the hotel to finish breakfast, change and pile into the car.
The tour was excellent. You are shepherded onto a Jack Daniels bus, driven to the start and then the tour meanders back to the beginning. We learnt about the Jack Daniels history (he was 5ft 2) from a family of 10 children, he left home when he was 6, to live with a neighbour who also made whiskey and that family taught him the skills needed. He bought his first land at 13 years old, and today many family generations have worked on site. 700 or so work at the plant today, that supplies the world with Jack Daniels Whiskey. They have 120 tasters and when a batch is ready, all the barrels with that date stamp can then be bottled. They make everything from the charcoal which the whiskey is filtered through (of course fuelled by Whiskey), to the barrels. Everything is recycled, the filtering charcoal is then sold later for BBQs. There were 20 of us on this particular tour, and the tour guide called Matt “England”. Matt got to pump the lid on the charcoal vats, which filled the air with the distinct smell. There are 72 buildings all producing Whiskey and they purchase the ingredients from farms across the country and if the quality is not good enough, they look further afield, to places such as Canada or Poland. Some of the buildings were highly controlled with no cameras because any electric spark could ignite the alcohol in the air. Each evening large trucks arrive with raw materials to commence the fermentation process. Each building has a name, barrels, bottling, fermenting.
The buildings were coated in a black bloom (harmless mould) because of the high concentration of gasses from the yeast). Today those gasses are also being recycled. Many illegal moonshine operations were set up in woods and they could be located by the blacked trees from this mould. To hide these sites, the trees were “power washed”.
Each building is built with reservoirs around it, so that if there was a fire, the liquid fire could be directed away from other buildings. They have their own on-site fire department who train every week, with the largest engines and pumps. John T (our tour guide advised that they have never lost a drop to fire to date - operating since the 1800s with official tours commencing in 1966. There are only two people who are responsible for making the charcoal which the Whiskey is filtered through (Tom and one other). They have worked there for 20 years so every barrel made and bottle shipped has had them involved.
Following the most excellent tour, we returned to Lynchburg town for lunch and then headed to our next hotel, 90 miles away in another state. We passed a few cotton fields on route and a Rocket (see Matt’s blog for info).
We need more whiskey to toast our arrival as we have hopped over the border into Sweet Alabama.
