It's Jack Alright

And yet another no result trip for an AT&T at WalMart in Tullahoma. They were out of Iphone 5s. Go Verizon!

Yes, it really is a town name.

We put the new phone search on hold and headed off to visit Jack...Daniel's that is.

Tullahoma, Tennessee is the Aerospace Town of Excellence! They even have planes on their power poles. The rural areas are some of the prettiest I've seen.

Contented horses in the fields.

White fences, so pretty.

Welcome to Jack Daniel's Distillery

The tour began at the Rickyard...or the place where their sugar maple is stored/stacked.

Discarded whiskey is used to fuel the fires. Every drop of Jack Daniel's comes from the iron-free cave waters and the hard sugar maple charcoal filtering.

The sugar maple is burned down to charcoal as seen in the pictures below. The steaming charcoal is cooled and moved across the road where it is crushed. It is used for filtering.

We didn't go into this building because it was dirty and dusty. Our guide was also wearing light pants.

This is one of 84 barrel storing buildings above, hidden behind the trees. Each building stores about one million gallons of whiskey. It takes between 4 and 7 years for a barrel to be right for bottling.

This is the actual cave where the iron-free water comes from. Every drop of Jack Daniel's whiskey comes out of this cave's spring, just as it has from day one.

Our guide next to Jack Daniels, who was only 5' 2" tall. A womanizer who never married and never had children.

Part of the original offices of Jack Daniels.

The story behind this safe was the death of Jack Daniels. One day he came into the office early. Tried to open the safe and couldn't. In frustration he kicked it with his left foot, breaking his toe. Infection set in and in those days medicine was not available for infections. One infection lead to an amputation of the toe, then the foot, then the whole leg. Gangrene took his life at the age of 61. Moral of the story, don't ever go to work early.

Part of the distillation equipment. No photos were allowed inside the processing stages of the whiskey making. But basically it goes from a 4-6 day yeast/mash boil, to a filtration system that goes through all that charcoal you saw earlier. That takes each drop about 6 days to make it through the charcoal.

Then it's barreled into white oak and stored in one of those 84 buildings. This ageing process in the barrels gives it that rich amber coloring. A few years later when the master distiller says it's ready it's bottled. I did not take this picture of the bottling. It was on their website.

Ta Dum....whiskey.

When the tour ended we got samples of Gentleman Whiskey, No.7 Whiskey and Single Barrel Whiskey. Only 1 oz is allowed by law, and we got 3 samples for a total of 1 oz. Gentleman Whiskey is lighter and goes twice through the charcoal filtration system. Single Barrel Whiskey is 94 proof and is like an explosion in your mouth. Personally I thought it tasted horrible.

Nice bar though.

Our Group Photo

After the tour we went looking for Lynchburg, 3 blocks away. Needed food to sober up. I'd only stuck the tip of my tongue in 3 samples...could feel the burn though.