Elvis place had been good but now it was time to move from one legend to another and visit good old 'Jack Daniels', which in David's eyes is a far bigger legend! The influence of JD is apparent over 100 miles away from his home in Lynchburg, there are signs and adverts all along the highway for the 100 miles of highway heading in that direction. But obviously David needed no encouragement to visit!

Now just to evident what a good old boy Jack was, his legacy has ensured that no charge is incurred to visit and tour the distillery!!!! This is the original site that Jack Daniels himself set up decades ago with a horse and cart delivery system, a few barrels, bits of maple tree and a natural spring.

The buildings are kept in the traditional old style American ranch look made from wood, and the people that work there are also the old style having grown up in the town and been taught the Jack whiskey brewing ways from their fathers and grandfathers.

Anyway that's enough of the tit bit info lets get on with the real story. Now the guide we had was clearly pickled in JD as was the entire work force, they were all constantly happy and treated this like religion (but a good one). But remember this is a dry county so no pubs or drinking whiskey from the distillery! (YEAH RIGHT).

After we had watched a brief video on the brewing process the guide picked on Carina to ask if she was a whiskey drinker!? To which she replied… err sometimes, to which he replied mmm I thought you might but you will have to work on that!! He then picked someone else and asked if they were a whiskey drinker and had they ever drunk from the bottle to which they said, yes they drink whiskey but never drunk from the bottle. (Lady obviously) He was clearly distressed by this and told her she had never lived until she had experienced togetherness!!! Now for those of you who don't know what Jack Daniels togetherness is it goes like this……. You inhale greatly from the top of the bottle to arouse your senses, then take a good nip, just the nip is important, not a mouth full. Then wait a second and swallow, your shoulders will pull in and your body tremble, your teeth chatter for the next three seconds followed by a warm feeling running through your middle down to your belly, then you follow up with… Damn that was Gooood. Now your entire body is in togetherness, so do it again!!! And let me assure you David and his cousin Martin are definitely in this club!!!

Now outside at the Rickyard burning area we got to see the maple stacks or Ricks, which are square cut lengths of maple wood, that have been stacked into a square but leaving a gap between every other one to allow the air to circulate (see the pics to see). These are burned every Monday until they turn into charcoal, they do it this regular as the charcoal that is used for filtering is changed twice a year, so hat will give you a clue how much they make to burn once a week. The burn is controlled by spraying a mixture of JD before charcoal filtering which puts it at around 150% alcohol and water onto the wood while it burns. If they get this part wrong or leave it to burn slow or burn too quick it will end up as a useless pile of ash.

We took a stroll through to the back of the grounds to see the natural spring that flows through the distillery, this is where the water comes from to make the whiskey and is not messed with at all, it goes straight from the spring into the mixers. This is the same spring that Jack Daniels himself used which is why he built his house on the land around it to ensure he kept it, so in honour of Mr JD his statue along with barrel is set in front of the spring to keep a close eye on things.

Next we saw the fermenting containers of which you can smell from some distance and hold over a 100 gallons of mixture which looks like mushy bread and smells sour, hence the name on the bottle that says 'sour mash whiskey'. From here we followed the pipes to the next containers which are wood instead of metal as the last were. These don't hold the whiskey though they hold the charcoal which by the way is changed every two weeks, the pipes that hover over the charcoal drip the whiskey onto the charcoal extremely slowly. Now here cam the best bit for us, the lids are padlocked down but the guide had us put our noses to the crack of the lid then shook it like mad!!! At this point you get the most potent smell of JD you could ever experience, if you inhale deeply with your mouth open then close it when you stop inhaling you can taste pure JD!!! RESULT, our guide did this a few times adding that this is damn hard work for him doing this six times a day. While we are on the dripping stage its worth knowing that the whiskey is still clear at the point of drip, it takes some colour from the charcoal but not all as the rest comes later.

For the normal old No7 brand of JD this is the whiskey will be dripped once through the charcoal, however 'Gentleman Jack' would be dripped a second time before going to barrel. The barrels are all hand made on the premises and a seasoned barrel maker will make 250 barrels a day!!!!!!! The barrels are all made from maple wood and passed over a jet of fire that only goes through the middle making the wood caramelise inside the barrel and blacken, (remember this is the same wood they use to make the charcoal) which combined makes a black sticky inner wall of the barrel. The Whiskey is then poured in and the barrel sealed, here it will stay on one of the many racks or floors that fill the several barrel houses around the JD site. Now the process really gets to work in its natural form, remember the Whiskey was clear when it was dripped! Well once inside the barrel it will absorb its dark colour from the caramel/charcoal inner of the barrel as well as some of its flavour. The barrels will remain untouched for an average time but realistically there Is no set time to brew JD as the tasters will decide exactly when it is ready and not fllow any timescales other than those in there taste buds. This process is the same for Jack Daniels old No7 brand and Gentleman Jack, but not for single barrel. Single barrel is exactly what it says, it is kept on the highest floors of the distillery for the longest period and selected one barrel at a time, the taster would test a couple from a whole batch for old No7 & Gentleman but in this instance one barrel is the batch. That particular barrel will be sold as a whole and comes with so much prestige that each buyer has a plaque made with their name and date bought along with barrel number etc, which is then mounted in a special room in the centre of the distillery right next to where the it will be bottled into special bottles and cased to be delivered as a whole batch. After which the details on the plaque are added to the register at the office to be kept permanently, whether they buy another barrel or not. Now one of these barrels is pricy in the region of around $7,000!!!!! But you get 58 gallons of the best Whiskey going for your money, so hey its all good!!!!

We visited the single barrel plaque room where in the middle is a tower of single barrel bottled whiskey which you can see part of on the pics, it was too big to fit it all in as 58 gallons takes up a lot of room in bottles. Next we saw where the bottles came for labelling, now you may be surprised that this is still done by hand. This owing to the fact a machine can not label the complex bottle neck perfectly enough for the JD standard, so they do it themselves to ensure quality on the outside of the bottle as well as inside it and a damn fine job they do too.

Next on the tour was the Barrel house and this is a sight for sore eyes if ever there was one, it is like heaven waiting to be discovered. Floor to ceiling miles and miles over the different stores each holding enough booze to fell an elephant are the maple barrels, full of superbly brewed Jack Daniels whiskey of various types. Now just after we took a picture of this the guide informed us all no cameras to be used as the air is so potent in this place the flash could ignite the whole place!!! THAT WOULD BE SACRALIGE!!!! Lucky we didn't have the flash on then isn't it, but one thing is for sure if you had nasal problems when you went in here they were sure as hell cured by the time you left!

The final stage to our tour was the refreshment house where all we got was lemonade and no there were no tasters, because this is a dry county so you can brew all the whiskey you want but you cant drink it. If you ask one of the JD staff where you can drink though they will give you the exact location of the nearest wet county line including feet and inches!!!!! There is however a bottle shop onsite which sells some very special stuff, now these are non of the 3 known JD brewed whiskey mentioned above. Oh no, these are unique brews only available direct from the site if you visit, otherwise they never leave the county. One is a gold medal winning brew from a world competition in Amsterdam in the 80's and comes with an individual code to register it online and receive a certificate as an owner, it is also the only JD whiskey to have a cork instead of a screw top! The other is a fine blend of the old No7 made slightly stronger and has a one off story on each bottle along with a picture of Jack himself, so it would be safe to say these are like rocking horse poo. With all that in mind David decided he was having one of each, which if anything else would have hurt the wallet but there are exceptions to every rule!! There is however a good reason for this purchase as David has 2 special occasions when these will be aired and you may well ask what they are. That would be unlucky as until those points come the mystery of the bottles fate will remain a secret, but rest assured for the people around at the time it will be a worth while wait!!!!!