Dickel's and Daniel's

George Dickel is a brand of Tennessee whiskey introduced in 1964 that is part of the American Whiskey Trail.  The brand's labels use the traditional Scottish spelling of whisky, as opposed to whisk-E-y, although the latter spelling is more common in American English.  According to the company, this is because Dickel believed his product to be as smooth and high in quality as the best Scotch whiskies.

George Dickel's Distillery is so secluded as to be in its own little world so don't expect good cell phone reception here.  The Dickel tour starts inside the general store and post office, which really is as rustic as it looks.  Now it serves as a gift shop, with the newer back half of the building providing a handful of museum displays and a video presentation.  If you look closely at the photos you'll also see signs posted right beside the bridge.  Whoa!  At this point I was second-guessing if I really wanted to tour this place!  I hate snakes.  Period.

An important distinguishing characteristic for Dickel, as Tennessee’s “other” big whiskey brand, is maple wood charcoal at the core of the drip-filtering process.  Dickel filters its whiskey in 13-foot vats of maple charcoal (three feet deeper than Jack Daniel’s).  Size is one of the main charms of Dickel's in that its scale can be defined as a “mid-sized distillery.” Some distilleries are so large that you never quite lose the feeling of being in a factory, no matter how historical the plant or how decorated the equipment.

George Dickel’s barrel warehouses are located up on one of the forested ridges bordering Cascade Hollow, and are not part of the tour, but we were taken to a recently added barrel house where the casks for their private barrel selection program are kept.  Tastings are held in what used to be the old tax collector’s house.  Speaking of TASTE.....Dickel's has a new partnership with the TABASCO brand pepper sauce to create a whiskey with a spicy kick, made by hand and finished in barrels used to age tabasco peppers for three years.  Two words describe this whiskey -- Hot Dickel!

Well.....we're finally heading to our last distillery on our Bourbon Trail Loop.  Would the old mantra of saving the "best for last" really hold true?  Jack Daniel's is a brand of Tennessee whiskey and the top-selling American whiskey in the world.  Tennessee Whiskey is classified as a straight bourbon authorized to be produced in the state of Tennessee and Tennessee law (57-2-106) further requires most producers of Tennessee whiskey to filter the spirit through charcoal made from maple prior to aging.

Jack Daniel's first gained popularity after the whiskey received the gold medal for the finest whiskey at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.  His personal whiskey fame would be short-lived.  Jack wound up dying in 1911 from blood poisoning. An oft-told tale is that an infection began in one of his toes, which Jack injured early one morning at work by kicking his safe in anger when he could not get it open (he was said to always have had trouble remembering the combination).

While the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933 repealed prohibition at the federal level, state prohibition laws (including Tennessee's) remained in effect, thus preventing the Lynchburg distillery from reopening.  Once these laws were repealed in 1938, production restarted.....only to be halted again from 1942-1946 when the U.S. government banned the manufacture of whiskey due to World War II.

Jenesa and I wound up paying for the premium Angel's Share Tour which allowed us to go to the tasting room after the distillery tour (in the historic Barrelhouse 1-14) and taste whiskey drawn from individual barrels, an honor that was once reserved exclusively for our distillers and tasters.  This gave us a chance to taste the expensive whiskey that we couldn't afford to buy in the bottle shops!  :)

Ironically, Moore County, where the Jack Daniel's distillery is located, is one of the state's many dry counties. While it is legal to distill the product within the county, it is illegal to purchase it there. However, a state law has provided one exception: a distillery may sell one commemorative product, regardless of county statutes. Jack Daniel's now sells Gentleman Jack, Jack Daniel's Single Barrel, the original No. 7 blend (in a commemorative bottle), and a seasonal blend (on rotation) at the distillery's White Rabbit Bottle Shop.

Lucky for me.....I found the PERFECT "commemorative" product on the shelf.  I am a huge Eric Church country music fan.  And Eric Church is a huge Jack Daniel's whiskey fan!  This limited edition bottle was made to commemorate country singer Eric Church's 2019 Double Down U.S. tour.  Each bottle comes in a collectors box with a metal tag.   Just one out of every 100 barrels are set aside to mature in the highest reaches of Jack Daniel's barrelhouses to produce this whiskey.  The dramatic temperature changes cause the color and taste to deepen further as it ages.