Saturday, was the seven-hour-guided trip to Lynchburg (Pop. 361), home of the Jack Daniels distillery. It is the oldest registered distillery in the country. On the way, I ask myself, do I like whisky? Like everything in Nashville, TN, the answer is 'not really', but the lure of visiting to a) check it off 'the list' and b) I like how alcohol (any alcohol) is made.
Some of the quirks of this town:
1. The population listed as 361 for this town. Does it mean that every time a child is born, somebody has to leave town? Dunno the reason, and no one in town knew. Or they did know, and mentioned it to me in their thick southern accent and I did not understand.
2. This is the home of Jack Daniels... the whisky of this country... and it is a dry town! So, no sampling.... argh! What the devil! Apparently, the town had to appeal to the state and federal courts to allow the distillery to sell one 750 ml bottle per customer!
3. For a tiny town, it has more BBQ restaurants and souvenir shops in the square than it has actual houses.
The tour was great. It was indeed fun to see the process. In short:
1. Charcoal, is what makes Jack Daniels what it is, whisky of this country. Wood is stacked and carefully burnt for 3-4 hours to form charcoal. The wood stacks are called 'ricks' and so the building where it is made is called 'Rickyard'. This is where a group photo was taken and is posted on Jack Daniels website. Charcoal is then ground to form small nuggets.
2. Spring water is used to make the brew and it comes from limestone cave springs. There are several on the premises. This is iron free, pure water. The grain (corn, barley and rye) comes mostly from Texas. Together it forms the 'Mash'. When the mash is created, some of it is held back to mix with the next batch to maintain some consistency from one batch to another. This mash that is held back is sour, hence the name of Jack Daniels is also 'Sour Mash Whisky'
3. The Mash is cooked and fermented in copper cauldrons. This looks like goo! and smells even worse. The 'goo' is then distilled into clear liquid. This liquid is sent to the Charcoal Mellowing. This a huge barrel roughly six feet diameter and 10-12 feet tall, full of charcoal (made in step 1), and small water pipes dripping the clear spirit at the top. The liquid has to make it way down 10-12 feet of charcoal. This mellows the spirit. The spirit is then whisked away into barrels made of white oak. Interestingly, the barrels are one-time use only and then shipped to Canada, Ireland and other places for scotch aging. At the end, of course is the bottling and shipping.
For lunch I headed into the town square, and was completely overwhelmed with the thousands of bikers in town. We had managed to place ourselves right in the middle of a biker rally. It was frightening. The only time bikers I know are in the movies, and they were somehow always (atleast the ones I have seen) depicted as rowdy, mean, terrifying, brawling menaces. So, it was very scared me, wandering in this middle of nowhere town. For once, I was happy that this was a dry town! Yeah! At the very least no one was drunk. I wandered around trying to get some courage to step into a restaurant to get some lunch. I finally did! This restaurant is really informal with long tables and you pretty much sat anywhere and shared table with others around. The only place open was between a family and four bikers. Yikes! But my stomach got better of me, and I sat down. Within seconds a menu materialized and I buried my head in it. I could not decide what to order, so when the hostess came back to ask, I asked her to suggest something. Somehow, my conversation attracted the entire tables' attention. Perhaps it was my accent or perhaps they wanted to suggest. Within seconds, whole table was suggesting what I should eat, asking from where I was, and commenting that east coast does not make any sensible BBQ. I settled on BBQ chicken, red beans and rice (YUM!). Somehow, additional food items appeared in front of me, the folks at the table wanted me to sample almost everything on the menu. An hour tater, I was still at the table, not eating anymore, but chatting with everyone, as if we were old friends. I think each one of us were amused at the others accents. At least I was with the thick southern accent and they were pretty much tickled silly hearing me speak.
After spending annoying amount of money in Jack Daniels glassware and Whisky (Let me know, if you are a whisky fan, you can have the alcohol, as long as I get the bottle back), we headed back to Nashville. It was almost 4pm in the afternoon, and I was beginning to get sick! Not from food or 'foreign' water, not with anything else other than heat. It was blistering 96+ deg F. I went through half of my sunscreen (spf 30) bottle, but that does squat for heat itself. I fair well between 50-75 deg weather. Below 50, I am okay, but as soon as that gauge starts to edge towards 80 deg, I hide under available shade. If I don't, I am heading for disasters. I barely made it to my room and there was nothing else to do but, crawl under the sheets of comfortable 65 deg room and passed out. One would think I am drunk!