211. Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey Review

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon.

And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, it's another craft distillery Monday. Definitely not a craft distillery.

Well, it's craft distillery one time.

I mean, probably the number one selling whiskey. in the world.

It is the number one. So you're exactly correct. They, they sell just a little bit down there in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

So we said every now and then we got a big boy. So this is, this is a big boy.

Yeah. I think in 2017, they sold 16.1 million cases of a whiskey out of there. That's a 38 million gallons of whiskey.

I don't even know what that is in barrels, but it's a lot so we've had 200 and a dozen or so episodes and never had Jack on the show never but this week we're gonna have it on twice.

We are we are well before we get to this Yeah, Wednesday's episode listeners you want to pay attention Really special Kentucky girl on Taylor Austin die. Pretty amazing. She got some pipes on her.

Yes, she does. The country Adele. Yeah. She, she can belt it out, right? She can. And she can drink some whiskey too.

Yeah. I think me and you were both shocked when we made the pours. We had pretty good sized pours. Me and you went to sip on it and she shot that sucker back. She threw it back. She threw it back like a young lady should. You don't want to miss that episode listeners. Very special. Her musical resonate with you. So make sure you catch that show. But now back to our review.

That's right. So we've got, we've got Jack Daniels. Yep. We've got the Jack Daniels 80 proof release here. 80 proof. Yeah. So this is the bottle that, uh, this is the house that Jack built, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people that listen to our show, We'll resonate with this. They've all probably tried it. We've both tried it. I don't know how many Jack and Cokes I've drank in my life, but I've drank a lot of them over the years.

Not a lot of Jack straight. So a little bit. Usually turning a bottle up, right? This is a big boy bottle right here. So we got a, we got a handle. Yeah.

And it's, I don't know, little, little more than half full right now. I've drank from this a couple of times.

Well, I think it's about darn time. We focus a little attention on this and we are doing it this week because we're also having Taylor on on Wednesday and we want to kind of focus a little bit on Jack and talk a little bit about Tennessee whiskey. And you've got some tidbits for us there, don't you? I do.

So 1875, it started out in Lynchburg, Tennessee. And I bet a lot of people don't know this about old Jack Daniel. His name is that Jack is his nickname. His name was Jasper. Jasper Newton Jack Daniel was his actual name and stuff.

Jasper was a, it's not a name that's used a lot anymore. Is it? No, that's a whole country boy right there.

I think there's a Jasper on lonesome dove.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's an old school name right there.

So, um, 1875, you say somewhere about that.

They can't quite figure it out now. Um, was he really the founder? Kind of was, but he'd learned how to make whiskey, uh, from a, Really his first master distiller, his master distiller, his name was Nathan Green, and everybody would know him as Uncle Nearest.

I've heard that story. So Uncle Nearest was the man who taught Jack how to make whiskey, right?

Yeah. And, uh, got a great story. And, and then Jack Daniel's biography, he actually wrote about him. So, you know how much, uh, uncle nearest meant to him to write about him, especially at that time, um, different, different part of the world down there back then. So, um, that shows you how much, um, he really meant to him to write about him. Now, now there's an uncle nearest whiskey out there. Yeah. So maybe we'll have to review them shortly. Um, Brown Foreman owns Jack Daniel's now. Um, that says a lot. So when we say Brown Foreman, we actually are talking about, um, Woodford reserve, old Forester. I got a couple other brands out there.

They've got, they've got an Irish whiskey slain. They've got, uh, They've got a Scotch brand as well, so tequila brands, you know, it's a bigger company than you might think, but the overall parent company of Brown Foreman.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about Tennessee whiskey for a minute, Jim. Sure. The great controversy that we usually don't talk about too much, do we? By U.S. law, it's a bourbon.

Yes. So it meets all the criteria to be a bourbon. Now, some people say they put it through that maple charcoal, they're flavoring it. Well, no, they're charcoal. They're filtering it through there and they're doing it while it's white dog before it ever goes in the barrel.

It adds no color, no flavoring. And what it does is it Uh, whiskey, you know, when that bite you got, it has these, if you looked at the, I guess scientists, we know more about this than I do, but there's these little, almost like, uh, those little barbs in like pepper, um, or grab a hold of your tongue and that's that spice you get, right? But it filters some of that out and cuts those or smooths them out a little bit.

Yeah. So I mean, uh, most whiskies that are made, in this world, most bourbons that are made in this world, go through some sort of filtration before they're put in the barrel, right? Or they go through some sort of filtration as they come out of the barrel because everybody wants to get out the chunks. They want to make sure that what goes into the barrel is pure and clean liquid, right? Yeah, a lot of them say charcoal mellowed. Yeah. Yeah. Now there's a heaven hill that says charcoal mellowed, right? Yeah. So, so just understand that that process of the Lincoln County process is what it's called, which is where they, they, they run the white dog or the, the new make gets run through the column of, uh, of maple charcoal does not invalidate the fact that it's a bourbon.

Yeah. Even if you look at the NAFTA free trade agreement with, uh, I believe Mexico and Canada, even Canada says that that, Tennessee whiskey would be classified as a bourbon. But they don't want to be called a bourbon. Now Tennessee doesn't, and I have a law down there in Tennessee.

And so Jack Daniels chooses not to be called a bourbon. They choose to be called a Tennessee whiskey. And what they do to their whiskey, other people outside of Tennessee cannot do. Sure. So it's their way to say, Hey, we're special.

And a lot of distilleries down there do it that way. You know, our good friends down at Leapers Fork, they've got a charcoal mellowing system and it's pretty neat. It looks like a giant, biggest sprinkler head I've ever seen before. And it takes quite a while to do that. So you know how long their column is they use to do that in?

I mean, no, I don't know, but I understand it's many feet, right? 12 to 20 feet or something like that. It's a big, huge column of, of charcoal.

Yeah. I think that's a neat process and it does smooth it out a little bit. Well, heck, we've talked about it a little bit. Everybody knows this. This is a rye bourbon, right? A rye Tennessee whiskey, I guess. Yep. 50, it's more 51% corn. Um, then they would add the rye and then, uh, they're malted barley to it too. It is a sour mash. Now, we've talked about that on the show before. Some people that are not whiskey drinkers will be like, well, it tastes sour. No, it doesn't taste sour. Sour mash is the process they use. So they'll take that spent grain and put it back in. to their next fermentation to kind of start that up right in that consistency is what makes their whiskey tastes the same every time.

That's right. It's called back set, right? It's had a little bit of that last batch goes into the next batch, just like if you're making sourdough bread, but sourdough bread is a little sour. It is. All right, Mike, well let's check this out. What do you say? Cheers. Cheers. Very familiar. Oh yeah. Very familiar. Brings back. Well, I won't say good memories. Brings back memories.

Now this is actually some of the first whiskey I ever drank in my life. Is it? I remember my stepdad got a, uh, I guess it was probably a Christmas gift or something, or he'd been at the company for so many years and they, they gave him a glass, a bottle and a glass. And I remember he hit it out inside of his workshop and me and my little brother go out there and sip on it.

The nose is kind of simple, but it's nice. It's, uh, it's caramel and a little bit of, a little bit of, uh, oak and pepper, not too much, but, uh, but no, no, not overly. This doesn't have too much alcohol on the nose.

Yes, not very, but it's 80 proof to a little bit of honey, uh, black tea on this.

You know, I was thinking tea actually went, cause I already took a sip. As soon as I took a sip of it, I was like, Oh, that kind of reminds me of tea a little bit. So sorry.

I got ahead of you, but I think that like Earl gray with honey on it, maybe a little bit of orange zest. Well, heck you're drinking cheers. I'll let's taste this. Cheers.

Yeah, it goes down real easy. Um, 80 proof, very smooth, no sharp edges. Like you said, um, kind of, um, doesn't have a lot going on.

No, that's not viscous or anything. Um, I mean, there's a reason why this gets drank with Coke right here a lot. Um, I still do get that sweet tea, that honey tea, a little bit of brown sugar in there, I guess.

It's got just enough bite to let you know it's a, it's a real whiskey. Um, but it is smooth. I don't feel like when I'm sipping on this straight, I don't feel like it's something that'll really punch through in a cocktail, but let's face it, this is in every well in the world. I mean, it's making cocktails like, well, that's, that's where all the millions of gallons are going, right? Cocktails and high balls.

And I don't think they care what you put it in.

Of course they don't. They're perfectly happy to have you make whatever drink you want to out of it.

Now, do you know their, uh, their DSP is not seven?

What's their DSP?

I think it's like 12 or 13, but that was their original. The story goes that that was their original DSP and they couldn't get that DSP back whenever they started back up after prohibition.

I thought old number seven had something to do with the batch number or something. That's what I read today.

Okay. A little bit of reading. I guess there's a couple of different stories about it, but old number seven, I mean, that's a, it's been around for a minute.

So have you been to the distillery?

Me and Viv did take a trip down there. Um, man, it's been a minute ago. We took my daughter down there with us and you know, we got to go to the little spring there and the statue of Jack Daniels. Have you been down there?

I haven't been. I need to go.

It's a nice trip. There's a little air force base down there, um, that has a campground and lake and stuff. And we'd stayed down there and, um, it's not that far away, you know, and that whole town is whiskey, right? It's everything is whiskey there. Now they say there's only 3,381 people there or something of the population of Lynchburg, Tennessee, but it's like six or 7,000 really.

Now they, uh, they, they were a dry County, right? Are they still a dry County?

I don't know. I was on the military base and no military base is dry.

That's true. That's true. I was just curious because I knew at one time I'd heard that, you know, Jack Daniels was actually in a dry County down there. So you couldn't actually drink it. You can make it, but you can't drink it. But I guess those things are probably changed.

Well, for a while, did you know that Jack Daniels, um, cause Tennessee went into prohibition before anybody else did. We've talked about that forum show. I think it was 1910 is when they went into that. So they had to move their distilling to Birmingham, Alabama and St. Louis, Missouri.

Oh really?

Now, none of that whiskey though, that was produced there was sold because it was bad. Oh really? Okay. It didn't meet the standards of that's what I read today. And I thought that was pretty neat that they tried, but it kind of failed and Tennessee didn't go back, I believe until 1938.

Yeah, Tennessee was the first state to adopt prohibition and one of the last states to give it upright.

Yeah, that's weird though. I know. That's the weirdest thing. People down there love to drink.

I think probably there was a, you know, it's that, it's a Southern battle that took place, you know, back at that, at that time. And it just, it, you know, we're still unraveling prohibition today. even today we have all these laws that are still remnants of prohibition, the three tier system, you know, the other things like that. And it's, it's just going to take a couple of generations for that stuff to disappear. But I do see a trend. I see a trend of, uh, of those things starting to go away. It'd be easier.

Well, I think, and I know our whiskey friends are going to hate me saying this, but I believe that micro breweries, um, kind of paved the way for distilleries in all these States, um, with beer and, uh, you know, there's something to be said about probably wineries too, right? Wineries and micro brews.

those things that have lower alcohol content. It's a little bit easier for, for people to buy into that, I guess. So yeah.

Yeah. Anywhere we go across the United States, you hear people say that Colorado, Texas, the out in Oregon, you know, the battle that, that they've had to fight with laws even here in Kentucky today, we're still dealing with some of that stuff.

You know, we are. So, so now Kentucky is a shipping state, which means that distilleries in Kentucky can now ship their product to customers. Which is great. You come to the Bourbon Trail, you visit a distillery, you don't have to figure out how to pack all those bottles into your suitcase anymore. The distilleries will ship them out to you.

Not to every state because you got control states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, right? That the state controls everything there. So all the liquor goes to the state and then they put it in their stores and

It'll take a while, but it's getting better.

Hurts the consumer. Yeah. The consumer is the one that pays. I believe in the distilleries because they're not able to ship to those States. You know, it kind of opened the doors a little bit. And like you said, it's going to take generations. Yeah. Well, Jim, hey, uh, you know, Jack Daniels is still good whiskey. Um, and if you don't like their 80 proof, man, they got some single barrels that are just fabulous out there.

Yeah. Their single barrels are pretty amazing. And in fact, I think, you know, definitely when you tune in on Wednesday, you'll, you'll hear about one of those. But, um, yeah. Look, this is a great whiskey. There's nothing wrong with it. It's an 80 proof whiskey. It's smooth. It's easy to drink. There's nothing special about it. It's not going to knock your socks off, but nobody expects it to, right? They just expect to be able to grab a bottle of this, add it to some ginger ale, put it in some Coke, have a cocktail made up with it. and just move on down the road.

Man, I used to drink the hell out of some high balls. Just a couple of them. Um, and with Jack or with usually everybody's gonna get on me about this, but I'd been known to drink just a little bit of Canadian whiskey with some ginger ale. But the same thing with Jack, you know, they sell plenty of it. A lot of people talk about it. Frank Sinatra actually has a bottle of this in his casket with him.

He does. Yeah. I think I've heard that. I think something we ought to do in the future is we had to do Jack and Jim side by side. Jack and Jim compare the two. What do you think? Yeah. I think it'd be a good show. They're definitely going to be different because that Lincoln County process definitely affects the flavor of the whiskey. It definitely has an impact on it.

You know, I just took another good big old pour of this, you know, Got a little bit of peanut butter on there, a little peanutty or nutty taste to that. Not almonds, but peanuts. Um, I'm not sure where that's coming from. If it's coming from the barrels or yeah, I still think it's a good expression. If you're looking to pour cocktails, heck, even you sit down by the campfire. It's not going to knock you. Britches off. This is kind of a everyday separate.

I'm going to empty your wallet either. Is it? No. So what would you pay for a handle of this? Do you remember?

I gotta be honest with you, Jim. Somebody brought this over here. They brought it and left it.

Uh, cause one of the fires, somebody, I'm going to guess, uh, I'm going to guess I handled it about $27.

I think you're probably right on that 20, 27 to 30 bucks. Um, that's not bad. Yeah. I mean, and that's a lot of whiskey right there. That's a bottle you pull out for a lot of big, big event.

Hey, I did want to give a shout out to all of our roadies and other listeners who made it out to bourbon on the banks here just a week or so ago. And, uh, it was a great event. Really amazing. I think there were. about 1200 people attending. Yep. And I think 150 of them are roadies.

I think there's 150 bourbon bullshitter t-shirts out there. A big, big thank you to Obby, one of our listeners. We could not have done it without him. And Jamie, his friend came and poured Woodinville whiskey for us all day long, never skipped a beat. Very educated about whiskey. had a lot of customers came coming at him about bourbon not being from Kentucky. Obby, man, you are the man. You are the master pour of bourbon.

Rockstar. He was a rock star that event for us. He allowed us time to really have time to talk with our roadies. It was nice.

Yeah. I mean we had roadies help us put up and tear down. Todd Ritter, Ralph Burgess was there. We got to thank you guys for helping us set up and tear down. Abby was there the day before helping us.

And our wives ran this swag table.

man, they not only ran the swag table, but they also like we're directing people, Hey, go to there to drink whiskey, go over there to sign up for the podcast and for the bourbon road, private Facebook groups, the roadies, they were doing it all.

So, and I want to, I want to give a big shout out to big chief here, Mike. I mean, you put this event together, um, at least as far as the bourbon road is concerned, you secured our sponsor, you got the tent, You got all the things that went into the tent. And guys, we didn't just have a tent. We had a palace. It was huge. We had about, I don't know, I would say we averaged 40, 40 plus people, 50 people in there at a time.

It was a, you know, I kind of get claustrophobic in crowds like that. And I was a little nervous. Somebody pinched my butt while we were in there. I'm not used to that. But people taking photos, talking to us, just, I thought it was a great event for us. I can't thank Diane Strong and her entire staff there at Bourbon on the Banks for letting us sit up there.

Real class act. Oh yeah. Real class act. So if, if you didn't get the, to experience bourbon on the banks, 2021, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to get out your calendar and put it in for next year. I think it's actually going to be in August next year.

Well, there's some debate about that. Okay.

But anyway, be watching for it.

August or October, whichever it is, if you can't make the Kentucky bourbon festival, make bourbon on the banks.

It's a smaller venue.

They had 40 distilleries. Yeah. And it stretched along the river bank. I don't think either one of us ever left our tent. We didn't have a chance. Yeah. But everybody that came said they had a great time. We actually had like 10 extra bottles there of whiskey. The roadie bar. The roadie bar. So if you signed up to be a roadie or if you were a roadie, we brought some pretty special bottles. Victor's toasted, right? Yep. Our entire bottle. Um, we'd barely drank any of that between me and you. And, uh, it, it went bye-bye right quick. A bottle of stag junior. It went quick. Um, iron root. I had brought a brand new bottle of that harbinger.

You had the harbinger, you had some angels envy. You had, uh, what else did we have there? Oh, we had a horse soldier.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a great roadie bar. And that's one of the benefits of being a roadie actually is that when you come to one of our events and whether it be a bonfire event or a pouring or, uh, something like this, you're always going to find a roadie bar, right? Somewhere that you can get some extra pores.

Well, I don't think. anybody else did that out there. And that was just a thank you from Jim and I to say, thanks for being roadies. Thanks for supporting the podcast. And we might only do that once a year or do it more than once a year. We usually have a tasting over here, Jim's house, or we'll do a bourbon blind, which we should be doing one soon here at some point. Um, but that's just a thank you from us to say, Hey, We really do appreciate you listening to us while you're driving down a road or joining our group, um, just giving us support. You know, it does take a, they say it takes a village, right? And that the bourbon road does take a village to put on and host events and stuff. It's not one man or two men. It's, it's an entire family that puts it on and stuff. And that's with our wives and our, our great friends like Abby and Todd Ritter that helped us out. getting invited to stuff like that. We talked at the Rippy house. Yeah, that was great. We got a tasting coming up on the next weekend.

So November the 6th, right? Saturday in Shelbyville, Kentucky at the barrel room. Are they sold out, Mike?

I'm not positive if they're sold out yet. So there's only 40 tickets. That's it. You're going to get four different pours.

And birthday bourbon is one of them.

The 2020 birthday bourbon is the main bottle, but you're going to get a 1910, a 1920. We are going to blend a 1915 there, that is a 1910 and 1920 mixed together, right? That's right. So really you're getting five pours. Yeah. Really?

Cause we're going to blend those two bottles together. And a little bit of history lesson, right?

Yeah. Oh, most definitely. You know, we're going to bring the history for it and then we're going to do the birthday bourbon and you never can tell. Cause our bars are overflowing with bourbon. We might bring some bottles from some of the reviews we've done from across the country and share our bourbon with you if you come out there. I think it's $50.

It's $50. And for that, you get that flight of pours and you get the, you know, sort of the walk through old Forester. So, and you get to, you get to hang out at sort of our stomping grounds, right? That's where we like to hang out.

Yeah. You'll get to see Main Street, Shelbyville. If you haven't been here before, you get to hang out with us for a while, have a couple of pours with us. We will hang out afterwards a little while too. have a couple of pours with you and chat it up. You'll have opportunity to buy some swag there if you want to buy some swag. That's just, that's what we're going to do. You want to come check that out. We appreciate it. The barrel room would appreciate it. If you are not a bourbon drinker, if you have a spouse that wants to come along with you, they don't have to buy a tasting to set at the bar and drink beer.

That's right. And they've got some great bourbon slushies there.

Well, I've been known to tear them bourbon slushies off.

They also have wine and other things as well. But the main thing there, it's a beer place. It's a brewery.

It is a brewery. They have a really nice bourbon bar, probably 60 to 100 bottles up on the shelves. They have some ciders if you're not into beer before the fall season.

And every Wednesday they have three special bottles on Whiskey Wednesday pours, $5 a pour. It's pretty good. Every Wednesday, every Wednesday. And they always have the bourbon road flight.

Yeah. I mean, who doesn't want that, right? That's right.

Well, Mike, where can our listeners find us on social media?

You can find us on a TikTok. Now we got two videos on there. Yeah. We'll have some more coming up. You can find us on Twitter. I don't know how much we were put on Twitter.

once we post twice a week on Twitter.

That's it. We don't really post anything else on there because there's stuff we don't talk about and that's what the kind of Twitter is for. I think. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I think we basically post on Twitter, our, our episode releases, episode releases, uh, YouTube,

Facebook, Instagram, we're on those. You'll see us on there quite often. We also have our private Facebook group, as we've been talking about the bourbon roadies, getting up to about 2,500 people. Get in there and join. Three rules, Jim. That's it.

That's right. You have to be 21 because this is all about whiskey, right? And you have to like bourbon because bourbon is what we focus on. And you have to play nice because we don't tolerate any rudeness. We want our listeners to get along. and have a generally good time together in that room, and they do. We don't really have any issues, I think. A few pop up every now and then, and our moderators take care of them pretty quick.

Yeah, Drew, Jason, and Adam, they all take care of that stuff. Now, to kind of help out with that rudeness stuff, we don't talk about politics, we don't talk about religion, we don't talk about social issues, we stick to whiskey in there, celebrate life.

Yeah. All right, so we do two shows a week. We do a short episode every Monday, like today's episode, where we take one bottle and we kind of dive into it and talk about it and try to give you an indication of whether or not you ought to pick it up and try it yourself. You know, Jack Daniels, you probably already had it, but if you haven't, it's a great pour. You should go ahead and get your hands on it. There's no reason why you wouldn't be happy to have this on your bar. I think everybody should. Sure. We do a long episode every Wednesday where we do more of a deep dive, kind of a, an exploration of, of a guest or a series of bottles or a distillery. And, uh, you know, that episode usually lasts about an hour, Mike, get some to work and home, right?

Heck yeah. I mean, You hear us just laugh and giggle and we have a couple of drinks in us. We get kind of giggly. So please give us a lesson. So to make sure that you don't miss those episodes though, you want to go over and hit that subscribe button at the top of your screen check or a plus button right there. And then you know what I'm going to say to you. I need you to scroll one down. You hit that five star review. You know what happens if you don't give us that five star review, right? I'm going to bring this big old bottle of Jack Daniels over to your house. I'm going to release my big friend, the big bad booty daddy of bourbon. We're going to drink some Jack all night. By the end of that night, you're going to give us that five star review. You'll be laughing along with us. Hell, I'm going to bring Jim with me. We'll be all giggling. Give us that five star review. We'd appreciate it. Opens up doors. It gets us into distilleries. It gets us nice bottles to review. Um, you don't want to miss next week's review. We got a pretty nice new craft distillery.

Yeah. Pretty exciting. I think a lot of people are going to be very happy to hear about this one. Yep. Now, you know, this episode is run a little long folks. We normally don't do 30 minute long craft distillery episodes, but a lot of information we wanted to get out today. Definitely make sure you listen to Wednesday's episode. You will not forget it. Taylor Austin die. She's going to have your attention. She gets everybody's attention.

You know, she, she, not many people make me tear up. My daughter, my son, my wife, maybe every once in a while I get a little emotional. When I retired, I cried a little bit. Um, but then she sang and I started tearing up a little bit.

So you have to listen in to the very end of this episode on Wednesday. I mean, all the way to the end guys, to the last song that takes us out because it's something very special. Yeah.

Yeah. Most definitely.

All right. Well, you can reach out to Mike and I. We're pretty available. You can reach out to me on email at jim at the bourbon road. Mike is mike at the bourbon road dot com. Probably the best way we say this all the time is to hit us up on Instagram. Hit our DMS. I'm Jay Shannon, 63. I changed my Instagram to match my TikTok.

Did you really? Yes, because it was confusing to somebody. They sent me something and said, hey, why is it two different things? So I changed it from one big chief. I am now big bourbon chief. on Instagram. Check that out. I'm on there on tick tock to big bourbon chief. Check out me on tech talk. If you would too. Did you have to give up one big chief? Yeah. Oh my gosh. I don't have two accounts.

I don't know. People are going to have a problem with this. They're going to have to, it's going to be hard. All right, folks, big bourbon chief. Got it. Yeah. All right. Well, we'd love to have you listen to both our episodes. We got another one coming out Wednesday. Make sure you tune in. Mike, what do we say every week? We'll see you on down the Bourbon Road.