Ep. 64 - Jack Daniel's Chris Fletcher Talks Sinatra, Legendary Distillers and the New Bottled-in-Bond

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And my guest today is Master Distiller and director of Quality at Jack Daniels. Chris Fletcher and a couple weeks ago, got a chance to make a little trip out. It was my third visit to the Jack Daniels distillery and had the honor of having Chris and his assistant Lexi Phillips, and my guest from episode two, Jack Daniels historian Nelson Eddie, along with us to tour the distillery, go into Motlow Cave and get a chance to actually taste two brand new products that are coming out from Jack Daniels in what is now called the Bonded Series, a Triple Mash and a bottled in Bond, which is something that I have been waiting forever to see come to our store shelf. So we had a great conversation while we're going through the distillery, talking about philosophy, talking about his grandfather, Frank Bobo, and also talking about innovation. And so it is my honor to welcome to the show Chris Fletcher. Chris, how are you doing?

Chris (00:01:19):
I'm great, drew. Thanks for having me. It's good to

Drew (00:01:21):
See you. Yeah, good to see you too. We got to know each other quite a bit there. Two days of hanging out at the distiller. That was a lot of fun because of course I've taken the Angel Share tour before and you get a chance to walk through and see everything, but there's something about hanging out with a master distiller and the assistant master distiller. When you're doing that, you can definitely do a greater deep dive and get more of the philosophy behind things. So, well,

Chris (00:01:53):
I guess we just love to talk about what we do, so it's a little bit selfish, I guess, for us but we love to show people our distillery. It's a special place, so come back anytime you

Drew (00:02:04):
Like. Yeah, fantastic. Well, and you've got these two new products, and we're going to do a tasting on those here in a little bit, but I also wanted to give people kind of a background on you. Actually when I did my interview with Nelson Eddie, Jeff Arnett was the master distiller there, so that was three years ago. And then not long after you came on board, and you had worked as an assistant under Jeff for some time, but you also have roots in Jack Daniels. And so we're going to jump into a little bit of that. Your grandfather, Frank Bobo, actually was master distiller there for many years, and we were talking just a little while ago about whether he was number six on the master distiller count, or whether in whether you're number nine or, I've seen that he's number five but we had a little conversation back and forth about master distiller in that title at Jack Daniels. And so would he have considered himself a master distiller?

Chris (00:03:10):
That's a good question. I think yes and no. Probably if you had asked him when he was still working here he'd probably say no.

Drew (00:03:20):
Yeah,

Chris (00:03:21):
But the title of master distiller is something that has sort of been romanticized in our industry over, I don't know, the last 25 years or so. And so he was never really referred to, no one here was ever referred to as a master distiller ever until probably the mid nineties. Of course, Mr. Jimmy Bedford was the distillery manager, head distiller. Those were the type of titles that were given to the person in that role at the time. And he started doing more ambassador work and started traveling and speaking of the brand and everything. And so that's where the master distiller role, that title kind of became that. I think it was probably common, I'm guessing in Kentucky. I don't know really the history of it, to be honest, but I, that's my assumption. But yeah, I mean, we've had probably anywhere 8, 9, 10 people that you could refer to as we're a master distiller, maybe even at sometimes a couple of people that could have held that title at the same time here in our history.

(00:04:28):
And so it's one of those things in a nutshell now, I think the industry, it's really more of a quality control position. And of course the quality organization is the part of the operation that I oversee here and we have a fantastic team in our quality department. And so when you're making whiskey in the town of Lynchburg with families that have been making whiskey here for generations, quality is built in a very, it just a sense of pride that people have here and making the whiskey that my grandfather made. And there's countless other folks here that have family members that can be traced back generationally years. So yeah, the master distiller, how many, I don't know, 8, 9, 10, somewhere in between. You can take your pick.

Drew (00:05:18):
Well, you have the fun when you go in on the distillery tour to get a chance to see when you walk into the old offices, the photos of all of the people that they had pictures. Of course, they didn't have any pictures of near screen, so can't really put up his picture, but fun to see and walk in there and see the personalities that were behind the whiskey and that helped take care of the whiskey through the generations. And we'll talk a little bit in a moment about quality and the idea of really holding to the tradition of those people that you see up there on that wall, but I wanted to dig a little bit into your own memories of that distillery when you were growing up, because for adults, it's kind of like Disneyland, you know, get your chance to walk around and see where it all happened. You get to see the safe that Jack kicked and all of that along the way. But for you as a kid, what was your experience around the distillery? Were you hanging around a bit? Did you get certain days that you were allowed to go, or were you kind of like, no, you're not supposed to go down to the distillery that's for adults and that sort of thing?

Chris (00:06:44):
No, I mean there was never that, I mean, years and years ago, I mean, it was pretty open. There really wasn't a whole lot of security. Anybody could just pull in and drive out and look around. Obviously now with trucks moving in and out and safety concerns that were a little more structured than we were back in the day. But typically Sunday afternoons we'd be after church, and a lot of times we would have a meal at my grandparents' house on Sundays and my granddad would have to come in and do something. I don't remember what, I was probably 5, 6, 7 years old. And so this is old office that I'm sitting in my office now. That was my granddad's old office, and you're right over my shoulder here, if you can kind of see that's the grain mill there where we're grinding all the grain and comes in.

(00:07:33):
And so a lot of times a corn truck will spill a little bit as it's unloading. And so that was my favorite thing, was to grab a few handfuls of corn and run over here to the caves springing pond where the ducks would settle and try to feed them the corn. And I always tried to catch a duck. I was never quick or athletic enough to pull that off, but maybe one day I'll be able to catch one. So for me, it was almost like a playground as silly as that may sound or as dangerous as that may sound for a five year old I remember the smells and the heat of the distillery. I can remember being sort of intimidated just by the loud noises and things, but it was really just a time that was fun to be with my granddad, and I didn't know what whiskey was or what these fermenters were doing or these stills were doing.

(00:08:28):
I had no clue. And of course he retired when I was eight, and so I was not around the distillery from that point on until I started working here in 2001. So there was that gap there. So yeah, my earliest memories here are they're really great memories and it's a little romanticized in my mind probably because as a kid everything seems bigger and grander maybe than it is, but this is a special place and it provides the world with its favorite whiskey. It's old. Number seven is I certainly enjoy all around the world. And so it is a special place and it's special to a whole lot of people. It's certainly special to me.

Drew (00:09:13):
Did you get to see the limestone cave? The Motlow cave when you were a kid? Did you know all about that?

Chris (00:09:21):
I did, yeah. Actually, memories as a young kid, we would take field trips so that the elementary school in town is just right across the street and around the corner. And we would walk, they would line us up and we'd walk and we would walk through the cave and you're seeing all the formations and the different rooms in that cave. And then they'd come out and they would feed us lunch, and then we would walk back over to school. That was always maybe towards the end of the school year, I think once you got to May and everybody was ready for summer break, it was a good half a day outing to walk over to the big cave and look around. So yeah, there's a lot of memories growing up here that probably every kid in Lynchburg has those types of memories. It really is a fun place.

Drew (00:10:10):
Well, the thing that catches my attention, and when I think of a kid, when I was a kid, I used to collect matchbox cars and I had a red fire engine that I could roll around on the floor. You guys actually had full size 1930 ario speed wagon out there with a bell on it and all that stuff. I'm sure you were climbing around that thing quite a bit.

Chris (00:10:34):
Those were one of my favorite spots. Yeah. Yes. We had a tour guy that worked here, his name was Garland, and Garland wore the big overalls and the big hat. And I'm pretty sure when he saw me, he knew if he would take me around, it would get him out of having to do another tour for the day. But he was always sort of a default babysitter for me around those firetrucks. He'd put me up on those firetrucks and I'd ring the bell on the back on that old speed wagon, and that was certainly one of my favorite stops.

Drew (00:11:10):
So one of the visions that we get, again, we talk about the romanticized idea of the master distiller, and many times when you see a photo of a master distiller, he's got a whiskey thief or a glass, and he's nosing a whiskey that's come straight out of a barrel. But when you were a kid, the thing that surprised me was you said you didn't spend a lot of time, in fact, you don't remember ever going into a warehouse while you were there.

Chris (00:11:39):
No. And in fact, once the whiskey's in the barrel, my grandfather never had anything to do with it. Again, if we think about it a distiller distills, a blender would blend if that's the role now. Now, don't get me wrong. As we talked about a few minutes ago, the master distiller job, now, number one, I think it's probably different at every single distillery, and a lot of it probably is blending now and there's nothing wrong with that at all. But historically, the focus here for the distiller is distilling the whiskey and getting it right before it goes in a barrel. And if you stop and think about it, distillers don't make barrels.

(00:12:23):
So if it's something wrong with the barrel, the distiller didn't do it. First of all, let's hope there's nothing wrong with the barrel <laugh>, and we've got great people making barrels. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with our barrels, but another thing to think of, we know when the whiskey goes into that barrel, if the flavor's right, the barrel's just going to make it better. Barrel's not going to mess it up, does it does not happen. And I've studied it at many distilleries in my career. I've been very fortunate to work with a lot of great people at a lot of great places. That barrel will work. It's just a matter of time. Now what flavor do you want to get it to? Right, okay, a little longer, shorter, whatever. But the barrel's going to work and there's nothing we can do When you're making straight whiskey, if something is a little bit off, it's not like we can fix it, we can't add anything to it.

(00:13:16):
And so as it is in Lynchburg, the idea of the distiller is someone who distills and ensures the quality of the liquid is right. Once it's in that barrel is just a matter of time. Eventually it will work. Now today, the entire quality organization here does roll under me. We've got great people from overseeing our distillery and the incoming grains and our new make whiskey all the way through to the bottle itself and fantastic quality folks that are making sure that our labels are straight and our glass is good and our closures are everything is as it should be. So it is a much more all-encompassing job. Certainly tasting whiskey is a part of it now, but I would tell you if we don't get it right going into the barrel, it's a lot to ask of that barrel to fix bad whiskey. That's not the case. And so I think it's just most whiskey consumers, they understand age and a barrel, right? They understand it's easy to get. When you talk about fermentation, even sour mashing is kind of not completely understood in a real thorough traditional aspect. How grains even become fermentable to make whiskey in the first place certainly is unknown in a lot of ways. And yeah, that's a very hot, sometimes smelly, dirty part of the process, but that's what it takes to make great whiskey.

Drew (00:14:46):
Have you ever had a occasion where you've seen a barrel that just couldn't be saved?

Chris (00:14:52):
I have seen that. So in 21 years now, working in distilleries, one time I've seen a barrel and it was actually an operator error it's at a undisclosed distillery, and I'm not going to mention any names but there was a barrel that we tasted and it just had such a strong aroma of a evergreen tree, pine tree, cedar tree. And I think what had happened is it's common when you sample a barrel that's laying on its belly and a rick, you drill into the head of the barrel and you allow some of the whiskey out, and then you take a cedar peg or a dowel and you force it back into that hole that you've created to stop it from leaking out. And so for whatever reason, I guess whoever had sampled that barrel thought it would be funny to shove about 30 or 40 of those little dowels into the head of that barrel <laugh>. And as we tasted it even in trying to blend that off and dilute it down that note of Cedar wood and it's sort of an oily resonance character to the whiskey, we worried about it even blending it off and thought the risk was too great. So that's the only barrel in 21 years that in my knowledge has been completely destroyed.

Drew (00:16:14):
So yeah, talk about, because you are related to Frank Bobo through your mother, but talking about the Bobos, because we actually, while we were there, we ate at Miss Mary Bobos and that name is all around town. How did the Bobos get involved in the whiskey industry and what was the family doing before that?

Chris (00:16:38):
That's a great question. We got involved really in the whiskey industry through my granddad. He, he's the one that really, we are not related to Jack's family or the Motlow family through a marriage yes, but there's not a direct line of descendant through the Bobo family into the Motlow or even Jack. And of course Jack, he died a bachelor and never had children. So his nieces and nephews, or the only connection through him now or back to him, I guess I should say. And so the Bobo family so it was Miss Mary her maiden name was Evans. She married my, and his name was Jack Bobo. And so she came into the Bobo last name through her husband. And so it was my grandfather's and it was my great-grandfather who, and the Bobo family in the Lynchburg area goes back generationally even farther than my great-grandfather.

(00:17:47):
But my great-grandfather ran the local grocery in town. Of course, back in the day when it was full service, you didn't push your own little cart around and pick out what you wanted. You walked in and my grandfather as a young boy and his brother were there to wait on you, and if you wanted beans or cheese or whatever, you know want, he went and got it and packaged it for you. And so he grew up working in that store, and of course the whole town did their grocery shopping there, including all the Mot Lowe's and everyone else. And it was Mr. Rager Motlow, who was Mr. Li's oldest son. He was the same age as my great-grandfather. And they were very good friends. And he would come into the store every day and have lunch. They had a lunch counter there. And so one day when my grandfather, this was actually New Year's Day, 1957, Mr.

(00:18:45):
Motlow came in the store to have his lunch just like he did, I think most every day. And he approached my grandfather and my grandfather had been married just a few years. He had been to Korea and the war and come back home, and his brother had married as well. And so now there's three family units living in, earning a living off of the grocery store instead of just one <laugh> as it had been a few years earlier. And I don't know why he thought of my grandfather, but he approached my grandfather and he said my grandfather's nickname was Frog. So he said, frog <laugh> talked to your dad, and it's okay with him, but he said it was your decision, but we would like you to work at the distillery. We're growing, expanding, and of course this was the late fifties when the brand was really taken off and we need some help and in the still house.

(00:19:38):
And so he said, well, yeah, that sounds really good, and when should I start? What should I do? And he said, well, just walk on over there and tell Li that I sent you. And Li T was running the still house at the time, one of the master distillers. And so he took his apron off, hung it up, walked the, I don't know, five, six blocks from the town square to the still house and talked to Mr. Tali. And he said, yeah, we start at four 30 every morning and at six days a week, he said, well, that's exactly what we do at the grocery store, so that's no problem. I'll be here tomorrow morning at four 30. And he didn't know what his compensation was going to be or anything, but that's how he started. And that was his first full day was January 2nd, 1957. He was kind of promoted to lead distiller, head distiller in 1966, and he retired in July of 89 as our distill. Is he the longest tenured he would be, yes. One of the longest, if not the longest. I mean, maybe you could count Jack or maybe Mr. Jess Motlow but with the gap of prohibition, if you don't count those years, then I think yes, he would probably be the longest.

Drew (00:20:50):
Yeah. So his stories of Jack Daniels before, did you ask him questions about what the distillery was back in those days? Kind of get that historic context?

Chris (00:21:02):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We lost my granddad in January, 2020 and was 90, would've been 91. He was such a resource of distillery operations. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because in 1957, they had eight fermenters that were made a outta Cypress wood they were trying to scrub 'em down and clean, like whitewash 'em in between. It's like couldn't clean 'em at all. And to see suddenly when Frank Sinatra adopts the brand and countless other musicians, and it becomes this pop culture phenomenon, they go to 24 7 operation and expanding the distillery, building a new barrel house every month that holds 20,000 barrels, all while not changing the character and flavor of the whiskey to think about what that team of people did that now we enjoy that investment into the process and that investment into making whiskey the way they believe. This is how Jack Daniels is made. That's why it's so important to me. It's so important to Lexi and the people of this generation because we're going to make whiskey the way my granddad made whiskey.

Drew (00:22:27):
We're

Chris (00:22:27):
Going to make more whiskey than he made, which is good for us too, but we're going to make it the same way. And that's the most important

Drew (00:22:34):
Thing for me. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize. And probably the reason why, I mean, Jack Daniel whiskey won an award in St. Louis in 1904. It was still, I mean, it was a national brand, but it really wasn't nationally known. It wasn't one of the biggest brands out there. It really didn't come about until this Sinatra era, the Rat Pack, and really during your grandfather's tenure that suddenly Jack Daniels became high in demand and all because it was on allocation, which is something we deal with now in a lot of different whiskeys, that there's just such a demand for whiskey right now. And he basically had to see his whole career in that era. Why was it that they could never seem to catch up to the amount of whiskey that people really wanted to have?

Chris (00:23:33):
I mean, just the explosive growth of the brand. That's the thing. When you look at the distillery flow of process of how much grain can you literally grind, cook, how many fermenters that you have, I mean, that fermentation process is going to take up to a week. So obviously it's basically a big mass balance. If you're bringing in so many bushels of grain, you gotta be pulling out so many gallons of whiskey. So then that gets to the distillation capacity. Obviously you have certain flow rates, you can only push so much beer and whiskey through a still and then charcoal mellowing, charcoal mellow's taking another day or maybe even more to put that whiskey slowly through the 10 feet of charcoal, and it flows at less than one gallon a minute. So then that becomes a big bottleneck. And so that's why we have to have dozens of mellowing bats now and then of course, finally as it's gotta sit in the barrel for 4, 5, 6, 7 years before it's ready to go.

(00:24:37):
So the decision could have been made back in that day to cut corners to make it more efficiently, more quickly, but they didn't. And so I think, and that's one of the things too, now that we've grown and we were allocated for the late fifties until almost 1980, I mean, you think about that mean, you're talking well over 20 years, just regular Jack Old number seven was allocated due to the demand, and it was allocated for that long because it takes a long time to grow and build out a distillery and a lot of investment. But that growth and growing it the right way, in my opinion, is what we enjoy now and the capability of this very traditional process of making whiskey. So to me, that's why I say that whiskey making team of the sixties and seventies was what they did to set the standard moving forward for the brand is I think one of the most important things that we've ever done here.

Drew (00:25:46):
I I've seen or heard about when Mark Twain was a big fan of Old Crow whiskey. So he actually ended up going to the distillery to tour. Did Frank Sinatra ever go to the Jack Daniels distillery as far as,

Chris (00:26:01):
I don't know that he ever made it here. I know my grandfather had never met him. No. However our first salesman was a man named Angelo Lucchese from Memphis, Tennessee. And of course he was Italian American and of course Frank was as well. And the story goes, Frank called him one day, and as he had learned of this Jack Daniel salesman, he had kind of fallen in love with the brand. And there's a couple of different stories out there that maybe Jackie Gleason introduced him to it. Some people say Ms. Warren Becall a huge fan of Jack Daniels, introduced him to it. I don't know, I'm not a much of a historian but nonetheless, when he found out about Angelo he quickly be befriended our one and only salesman in the whole company in the late fifties. And Angelo became fast friends with Frank Sinatra with the rest of that gang and Rat pack. And he had a lot of great stories, as you can imagine.

Drew (00:27:06):
I can imagine. Yeah, those would be fun to he should have wrote a book. I know all this information gets lost and it's so sad. Your relationship with Jack Daniels, you actually did not just jump right into working for Jack Daniel as your first job or as what your direction was going to be in life. What was your hope for your own future?

Chris (00:27:34):
Yeah, I mean, I was in college studying chemistry and I was a little bit unknown. I had considered pharmacy for a while didn't really know, honestly <laugh> what I was going to do. And then after my second year, I came home for the summer and basically cut a deal with my parents that I would get a summer job to help <laugh> to have some money going back to school in the fall. And my roommate from school wanted to come down and visit, and he was a chemistry student as well, so he was interested in the distilling process. And so we were taking the tour one day and of course the tour guide, obviously I knew growing up in Lynchburg, a town of 600 people, everyone. And I had a kind of light bulb moment to where I thought, wow, that would be a great summer job. You know, just get paid to talk.

(00:28:23):
How great is that? Yeah, so long story short, they ended up hiring me as a tour guide that summer, and I was hauling out trash and all these other things on the side that you had to do when you have thousands of visitors coming to visit you over the summer. And that's when I started to learn more about the process and then really picking my grandfather's brain as far as how this works. And I became fascinated about how you take whole grain and turn it into whiskey and learned about a lot of the science behind it. Really got more of an appreciation of our history as well and how distillery came to be here and how it had grown. And that's when I decided, well, whiskey would be a pretty good career. And so two years later I got lucky. I graduated from school and I wasn't focused on being back in Lynchburg.

(00:29:19):
I was 21, 22 right outta college. And Lynchburg's a beautiful, wonderful place to grow up. But when you're in your early twenties, a little bigger town was a little bit appealing. Yeah. So I moved to Louisville, Kentucky working for Brown Foreman, which is of course our parent company in the r and d lab. And so in research and development, I worked a lot with Jack Daniels, I mean it's the largest brand in the company and worked on a lot of projects down here, but also the Kentucky distilleries. And we acquired some tequila business over my time in r and d. And that was fascinating to spend time down there and learned. So I've been blessed, I've been able to work and be in a lot of different distilleries really across North America and see a lot of different ways that grain has turned into whiskey. So now I couldn't think I could have ever imagined that it would work out as well as it did. So I'm very lucky.

Drew (00:30:16):
Well, and I'm sure that you now have relationships with the other distillers from Sale Forester and Woodford Reserve and the other company distilleries, because you probably were interacting a lot with those people.

Chris (00:30:34):
Absolutely. Chris Morris Elizabeth and Jackie with Old Forester they're great friends and we don't get to interact both, we all get busy and have our things that we have to get done at our distilleries but it's really, and I would say even broader than just within the Brown Form umbrella, it's really a great industry. I find that once people are in the industry, they may move around a bit, but they generally don't leave. And so there is certainly a comradery amongst Distillers, I think Kentucky, Tennessee, and we have over 30 distillers now in Tennessee and our own Tennessee Distillers Guild. And it's fantastic, the growth of making great spirits here. So it's just a really fun industry to be in.

Drew (00:31:28):
And so you had actually one other distillery experience after Brown Foreman before you joined Jack Daniels. You were at Buffalo Trace.

Chris (00:31:37):
I was for almost three years, a league chemist there with Rack and had great people there and Mark Brown, Harlan Wheatley, drew Mayville what a great team there. And I consider them great friends and it was certainly a great experience to be there and to work there for three

Drew (00:31:58):
Years. So it's gotta be helpful, I would say, in some ways to see how a different culture makes whiskey just to be able to get a little bit more well-rounded. Cuz I'm sure once you're in the brown form and universe there are systems and processes and things that probably are pretty standardized and then you get over into another and you're getting a chance to see some other things that you might want to add to your own arsenal.

Chris (00:32:28):
Yeah, absolutely. Even still today, if there's something interesting out there, you you'll want to try it. You want to always learn and take things and see obviously how can you apply that's making the best whiskey you can possibly make. And that's been since I started, at least in 2003 when I started as a day one chemist at Brown Foreman in research and development and got to meet Lincoln Henderson and then of course Chris come along too and gotten to know him. And it's been something that if I look back on it and the people I've been able to meet and ask questions and I ask a lot of questions, I think that's the nature of being a chemist. Yeah I couldn't, I've scripted, I don't think a better possible way to grow within the industry. And I've had great mentors all the way through to working for Jeff here and it's been just a fantastic ride.

Drew (00:33:35):
How did you end up back at Jack Daniels then?

Chris (00:33:38):
Yeah, I got a call from Jeff at the time and then Larry Combs, who is our general manager here overall, Jack Daniels manufacturing supply chain. And basically that they were interested in an assistant master to distiller role. There'd never been one here before. And so it caught my attention a bit and really the opportunity and the respect that I had for both of them is what brought me back. And I was very happy, obviously where I was at and had a great ride at saac. But to come to be able to come back here and this office is my grandfather's old office and at this desk he had this desk and Jimmy Bedford used this desk that I'm sitting, I know you can't see it on the computer, but I promise it's there. But that was an opportunity for me to do something pretty special and to be back in the assistant master role. And my granddad passed in January, 2020. I became our distiller October 1st, 2020. So he didn't get to see me actually be in the master distiller role unfortunately, but I think he knows. So

Drew (00:34:54):
That was a kind of surprise I guess. Did Jeff Leton at all that he was eyeballing going off and doing his own thing?

Chris (00:35:04):
I was surprised. Yeah, absolutely. Drew, I was very surprised. Didn't know that he had been thinking about that, but I certainly understand opportunity to, it'll work for himself and I get that and certainly have great respect for Jeff. He was fantastic to work for, certainly learned a lot from him and more than anything, just he's a great person. He and his wife Lori are good. I consider them great friends of Ashley and I, and I still get to see him time to time still in Tennessee. He's still around. But yeah, we love the ARN nets. They're great people.

Drew (00:35:44):
And you've got a little one now, is he eyeing those fire engines yet?

Chris (00:35:50):
He is just getting to that point. He'll be too in July and he is just running around a wild man. So yeah, I like the way you think. He's been up here to the distillery a couple times and walked through and shown him around. So he's still in that kind of phase that everything is kind of new and he's so fun to watch and just absorbing so many things at this point. It's a lot of fun. So it'll be, I think the next couple years he'll have a great fascination for firetrucks and <laugh> ducks down here at the pond. So

Drew (00:36:25):
Nice. So talking about process, cuz we talked a lot about it as you were walking us through the distillery, and as I talk to distillers, there are different elements that each focuses on. And we get this idea that somebody like Jack Daniels is so big that there's not really going to be much that you are going to be able to affect in terms of it's just like going to be, let's produce this one product, get it out there, and that it's, there's not a lot of controls to it, but there's philosophies that you talk about in the production and a lot of these are going back to the way that it was made long ago and trying to stay consistent with those as you're moving along. Because some distilleries end up kind of cutting corners here or there to try to hit the bottom line. You got stockholders, you got all sorts of considerations now that maybe you didn't have as much when the distillery was smaller and growing.

(00:37:39):
And so it was interesting talking with you about some of these things and what you in particular were focusing on. And so I wanted to talk about a couple of those things when we were talking about Buffalo Trace and they don't really let anybody know what their mash bills are. They're very secretive about their mash bills. But when you go to Jack Daniels, you go to a lot of different distilleries, they're very open about allowing their mash bills to be seen and understood. And so why do you think that the mash bill being released to the world is really not an issue?

Chris (00:38:25):
Well, every distiller has their perspective on things and then certainly that's fine. I'm not saying that anything is right or wrong, but Jack Daniels is 80% corn, 12% multi barley and 8% rye. You can go for it. Yeah, good luck. Go ahead and make your own the recipe. I think that I just want people to know everything about what we do here and it's, I guess it's just that simple. That's just my philosophy. I truly believe as people learn how we make whiskey here that they will have an appreciation and a respect for what we do. Now I know not everybody's going to say that Jack Daniels is their favorite whiskey. That's silly. But I do think there's nothing secretive here. I mean I want people to know, and full transparency the quality of our grains, they're all number one grade. We don't source number two and that's means and sorted.

(00:39:30):
There's very little foreign material coming in at all. You can imagine from a cornfield what would come in. But that 12% malted barley is kind of the big one there because grains are not fermentable in their state. Even after you grind them into meal or like a flower and you cook them in water, still not fermentable grains, most grains anyway store their carbohydrate as starch. Starch. You can't even dissolve that. If you cook, you know, mix corn starch into something that thickens the dish, you cannot dissolve it. And so starch is non formidable water and heat, doesn't matter how long you cook it, even under pressure above 212 degrees under pressure even you are not breaking down and dissolving starch. It's not happening. And so that's the role of malted grain and that's why there's a minimum of 12% malted barley in any grain bill that we're doing here.

(00:40:33):
So we just rely on the malt to break down. And so that malt has simply been sprouted and that sprouting process creates things called enzymes. And so enzymes are naturally made from the proteins in barley and these enzymes there's three different enzymes that are created in this process and they will actually attack and break down starch. If you think about functionally why that works, barley as it's harvested in order to malt it or sprout it, they steep it in warm water. And so they're replicating what springtime in the upper Midwest and in every little seed of barley is underground getting ready to sprout in the merge into a new barley plant. And so as soon as it's s sprouted, they drain that water off and they blow your eye. Obviously we don't want it to grow into a full barley plant, we just want it to sprout to create those enzymes from the natural protein.

(00:41:32):
And so the barley has to break down its own internal starch into the simple sugars, the components of starch to consume for energy to create that new plant because it's not emerged from underground yet it's covered with dirt. And so it can't absorb sunlight via photosynthesis, then make its food from that point on. And so this is all natural process, this is mother nature and nothing else. And so if we rewind the clock a little bit, obviously that would've been the only way to ferment grains back in the day was to allow some of your grain to sprout or malt on its own, add that to the mix, allow that to break down those starches. Or the second thing that you could do would be to add sugar, simple sugar, which of course is not allowed in straight whiskey production. You're making something more closely to rum at that point,

Drew (00:42:31):
Sugar shine, something like that,

Chris (00:42:33):
Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So that is something, it's a bit of a tradition and an art that I think that it's a shame it's not talked about more in the industry because that is really, you talk about the role of a distiller that's important. That's the way my grandfather made whiskey. It's very important to me, very important to a lot of people here at Jack Daniels that we're not supplementing or relying on any other form of that enzyme or that protein that creates the enzyme in the natural malted barley. The other option obviously now with kind of biotechnology there's companies that you can buy enzymes that have been genetically modified to very rapidly break down starch. One thing about the barley enzyme is it's it sort of more precise, I liken it to scissors and it's clipping certain linking bonds of the starch off to reduce the size of it into small sugars.

(00:43:45):
So starch is literally, think of it like a big ball of chain link branching off in all different directions, hundreds, thousands of single sugar molecules, glucose maltose being the double sugar. And that is what the enzyme from malted barley will slowly break that down mostly to maltose that we can measure here, which is actually a double sugar at disaccharide shift gears and start using a more commercially available enzyme, which is very powerful, very efficient, much cheaper to dose in than malted barley is. That is going to be very, very aggressive and break it down all the way to its simplest form the single sugar, which is then glucose which obviously is very fermentable as well. Yeast will attack that and consume that. But we know I, we can measure it number one with our ability now in our labs that our malted barley enzyme, it does feed that yeast a different form of sugar and very much we feel like that is important because that's the way our fermenters have been done, at least as far back as we can remember. And certainly there was no other option back in Jack's day. So very traditional way of doing that. Do we give up a little yield? Absolutely we do. We give up a little efficiency, absolutely. Do we give up time?

Drew (00:45:17):
Yes, probably give up some money too because barley is not as inexpensive as corn is.

Chris (00:45:24):
Oh absolutely. 100%. You're 100% correct. You know, think about just the labor involved with not only harvesting that barley but malting it, steeping it timing that out, that process. And these malters are fantastic at what they do. We've got some great suppliers, it's all done up mostly in the upper Midwest there, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Minnesota. And so that's where the best barley in the country's grown. That's where we're sourcing all of ours and our suppliers know we are hanging our hat on the quality of that malted barley because we are using that and that alone to break the starch down in the grain into a fermentable form of sugar.

Drew (00:46:07):
This is where seeing mash bills makes this so interesting. Once you start to learn more and more about whiskey. And there is this thing when you are looking at those mash bills, you'll see some of the more traditional historic brands have that high level of malted barley Inn. But as I do tours of distilleries, I will hear people say, well we only put in 5% multi barley because we just need that for conversion. But as you and I were chatting back and forth, you were saying they really couldn't do that without using a booster, something a commercial enzyme to assist on top of that 5%. Cuz 5% isn't enough. Is that the case?

Chris (00:46:55):
Yeah, well again, I don't know operations and can't speak for anyone else. Certainly 10% is pretty common out in the industry. I would feel probably pretty comfortable there at around 10% inclusion much below that. I would get nervous, very nervous very quickly. It would become far too sticky here with what we're doing there's other enzymes that are at play as well in this process and things that are going to break down sticky protein structures and things and that are just inherently grained. And so what happens is when you first cook grain and you're starting to mash it, it's very viscous because of all the starch that's coming out and it's not dissolving. So it's gelatin actually. So it's literally thickening the liquid that of course we're using the caves spring water here, heating it up, we're cooking the grains and it looks like a huge tank of grits.

(00:48:02):
It was just corn, it's rye. And then when we add that mal, you could see if you open that lid and you look at it, you can see over the course of just minutes how the viscosity is reduced by adding that malt. I would tell you much less than 10% sure. Where does the number break? I don't know. And it's probably different based on the grain bill. It's probably different based on just how much total grain you're putting in, how thick the mixture is, but much less than about 8% for me. I don't know that I would be willing to try it because it's really hard through pipes and pumps to get grits from point A to point B. It's a lot easier when it's much more liquified, which is what the malted grain does for

Drew (00:48:55):
Us. Yeah, how much grain do you go through in a day day

Chris (00:49:01):
Over about one and a half million, 1.7 million pounds grain.

Drew (00:49:09):
Amazing.

Chris (00:49:10):
So we need to be able to pump those cookers out.

Drew (00:49:12):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you talk about we the Lincoln County process the process of charcoal mellowing a whiskey. And one of the things that you brought up that I thought was fascinating is that you really feel like that charcoal mellowing process is taming the corn. Cause you have 80% of your mash bill is corn, but Jack Daniels doesn't give off a overly corn kind of a taste. So talk about that and what your philosophy is with that.

Chris (00:49:50):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's what I look for when I'm tasting our new me whiskey as it goes through that charcoal. To me, that aroma of cooked corn sweet kind of cream corn or even cornflake cereal in a more cooked note to it. And there's a bit of oiliness to it as well. And even corn oil can be a little bit bitter on the edges of your tongue. And that's really where the mellowing term I think comes into play. Cuz it does soften the mouth feel as well. But with an 80% corn grain bill, that's pretty high corn, but you don't get a lot of corn flavor with Jack Daniels with old number seven gentleman jack or single barrel select. There's a hint of that sweet corn note in there. But it's certainly far behind the big esery fruity aroma, kind of a mild toasted oak in the mid pallet, certainly a little more oak on the single barrel products and then the finish just a touch of spice on the back end.

(00:50:51):
And so if you think about that, that's pretty unusual. I mean old number seven is between four and five years old and you know, would think there'd be a lot more influence with 80% corn. And that is to me, the magic of charcoal melllon. And what it does it does remove a little bit of that heavy grainy note that is just kind of laying over the top of the whiskey. And my theory, we can't measure this cuz it's at a such low level, but my thought is there's a little bit of corn oil that gets blown into the whiskey just physically in the process. I think that happens a lot of times in the world of bourbon even. But we can't measure it. We don't have a capability of measuring anything that small, but the human noses and palette is more precise in a lot of ways than any instrument that we can have in a lab.

(00:51:45):
And so that's what I look for and that's what I get. And so when you do get that esery kind of, some people say banana, apple peel pear, I think green or green, pears a really good descriptor. That fruity esery aroma that is expressed via our yeast and how it ferment different things how then those different things aged through the barrel as it sits in a barrel house and those flavors are in new make whiskey here, but with 80% corn, there's such a strong influence of that corn note on the new make, it's really hard to pick it up.

(00:52:25):
So after it goes through the 10 feet of charcoal and it takes 24 hours and up to a couple of days even for the whiskey to slowly filter through and then you just nose the whiskey and right away it just explodes with that sweet esery, fruity, almost floral aroma. Those aromas were there, right? It was just being masked by the corn notes that kind of sits on top. So to me that is exactly what I look for when I'm tasting our new make we're tasting these vats and when do we take the charcoal out and replace it or can we keep it going up to a year, it'll last in a vat. So that's what we look for when we're trying to make those types of decisions in our operation.

Drew (00:53:10):
And the thing that gets speculated over by a lot of people, and I actually did video on this a long time ago before I got a chance to talk with Jeff Arnett and talk with yourself about where that banana note comes from. Because I tell people when I had covid I lost my sense of smell and I lost it for months. And the first whiskey that brought me a scent that I went, oh, I'm recovering was Jack Daniels, cuz I could smell that banana note, that little banana nut bread note that comes out. And we had such the privilege to have a chance to go into the Microlab and actually smell that yeast. So where is that banana coming from in that yeast?

Chris (00:54:01):
Yeah, so that is an Esther called Isol Amal acetate. And so what happens in fermentation, there's a lot of natural acidity that's made. That's kind of how the whole sour mash process is set up. That's why it works cuz you're souring naturally via fermentation. You're creating this acidity and then adding it to another mash to sour or acidify a little bit the next one. And so these acids will, they react with alcohols. And so when you react in organic acid and in alcohol together, it forms Esthers and Esther are naturally occurring organics. They're in flowers and fruits and in foods. So those are very aromatic on the nose. And it's isol amyl acetate that happens to be the one that really gives that banana note and it's in bananas it can be measured there and we can measure it at very, it's a very low level in our whiskey, but it is in there.

(00:55:00):
There's other Esthers as well other forms of alcohols, higher alcohols called, referred to as fusel oils, Amal alcohols ols, some different forms of propanol are all naturally in whiskeys. They're in all forms of whiskeys. And the ratio of those are set up by the fermentation process. And that's why if you think about fermentation, and we're growing our own yeast in our own lab here and we're bringing that in fresh from our lab every week, our microbiologist is doing that for us. The yeast is literally creating the whiskey literally. And so absolutely we are not going to outsource that. We're not going to give it to anybody else. It is a proprietary strain. We don't share it with any other distilleries but I can tell you it's alive and fresh right now and being grown off of its mother culture right over here in our lab that we're going to bring in and we can date that yeast strain back to prohibition time.

(00:56:00):
So that's something that we're pretty proud of that it's always fresh yeast, it's always coming in from our own lab here at the distillery. That's literally the heartbeat of making the whiskey. And it's also super flavor impact. So to me, the barrel is the number one source of flavor for straight American whiskey. The yeast is the second. And so super, super impactful. Now some yeast strains are a little more I don't know, kind of mild, maybe they don't make as big of a impact but there's lots of others out there just like ours that are super flavorful and creating big esery type of whiskey. So it's certainly one of the hallmark flavor notes in aromas and Jack Daniels.

Drew (00:56:46):
Yeah. Well I am looking forward to diving in, I know we've had whiskey in glasses sitting here for a little while waiting, so I think they've had enough time to breathe that we can jump in and start talking about these Absolutely. These new products that have come out. Let's talk a little bit about this idea of a bonded series and talk a little bit about your role in innovation over time, because we've had some products coming out. We talk about during your grandfather's time period, he was making one whiskey and then at the end of his tenure, let's see, 1989, so he would've been right when Gentleman Jack came out. And so now you have two skews and now there are a lot of different whiskeys that are coming out. We've had Single Barrel and we've got a little bottle of the Tennessee tasters back here, which I love. And we're talking about Coy Hill, which is a barrel proof from the area of the Rick House we got to go to up in Buzzard Roost. And then a 10 year has come out. So this explosion of innovation here and coming up with different styles of Jack Daniels, when did the seed of that start? Was that something that Jeff kind of brought along or was that prior to him and was always in the works?

Chris (00:58:16):
I think it's something that just the company as a whole has been focused on more over the years. And yeah, we've done a lot of different types of innovation especially over the last three, four years. I mean, it's really started to come out and then a lot of that was in the works for years before that as it has to be. And so it's been something that we've been working very hard on. And the fun thing is at the Tennessee Tasters, that's our kind of distillery release which is really gets things out of the box. We brought up wood from the Caribbean, from Jamaica and done barrel inserts with that. We've done barrel swap programs with local breweries and wineries and all kinds of different things. That's been fun and that that's really kind of where we are testing and learning a little bit. And those are only available in Tennessee, mostly at our distillery.

(00:59:15):
And then the single barrel special release has been something that has become wildly popular. And the Coy Hill high proof we saw some exit proofs, some of the highest I've ever seen. And we don't cycle barrel houses here, we don't heat 'em up, we just let 'em get cold in the winter. And heck, we were seeing stuff over 150 proof coming out of a barrel and a nine year old and in a standard size 53 gallon barrel, that's really unusual. Over 150 proof, I've never really seen that before. Smaller barrels certainly will bump that proof up more quickly in my experience anyway but in a standard size barrel, I've never seen exit proofs come out that big. And so it just speaks to all these different things, the tools that we have to innovate with the barrel houses and what they just do naturally. We're done projects with, we've a local farmer here, we've grown 30 acres of different heirloom corns that we're looking at and still aging away.

(01:00:18):
And we have our own log buyers in the company. We're sourcing wood from the Appalachians to the Ozarks. And so we're starting to dig in and look and see when we single source logs and we track that through our own stave mills, through our own cooperages making our barrels. How is that going to impact? Is there a difference We don't know for so many years, to your point, it was about consistency and making old number seven because we could not keep up. And so certainly in my granddad's day there was no even thought of, Hey, how would we make a rye whiskey here be? That'd be interesting. Now, fortunately, number one, the American whiskey market is interested in that and people are interested in trying new and different things. And 10 year old this year, we're also going to have a 12 year old to come out that Jack himself had 10 year old and 12 year old age stated whiskeys when he was alive.

(01:01:15):
And to be able to create a product that Jack Daniel literally did that, you know, just have to pinch yourself to think that you're a distiller during this time in our country and the popularity of American whiskeys and how even globally American whiskeys are starting to grow and be recognized as some of the best whiskeys in the world. And so when you think about around the globe, American whiskey is still a very small part of the global whiskey market. And so there's amazing opportunity outside of the US and we've got friends all over the world of Jack Daniels. And so I can't wait to get more and more of these new products out because it gives us, I think n n new things as people want to know. And they're intrigued. Well, tell me about that. And then it gives us an opportunity to tell people how we make our whiskey.

(01:02:15):
And for me it's to tell them about our grain bill and to tell 'em about how we're mashing and distilling on 100% copper stills how we're growing our own yeast strain in our own lab, how we're making our own barrels, making our own charcoal. And we have great people across this distillery and what we do from the people in our stave mills that are literally taking the logs of white oak and debarking and cutting them into bolts and quarter sawing and making the staves to our coopers that are making raising by hand our barrels every day, toasting, charring them, getting 'em to Lynchburg all the way through the operation here at the distillery from grain to bottling. We really have a fantastic organization and a very tight knit group of whiskey makers and it takes all of us. It takes a village for sure.

Drew (01:03:12):
Yeah. So, alright, we're going to talk about bottled inbo, this idea of aging whiskey for four years. Fans of this show will know they can go back and listen to my episode on the whole story of how bottled in Bond came about. But Jack Daniels and this bottle that you've designed is, it's kind of a throwback to a bottle that actually predates the Bottled in Bond act. So I understand

Chris (01:03:39):
Exactly. Yeah, the package is just gorgeous and I take zero credit on how amazing this package is. We have a design team obviously that is talented and an innovation team that works with them and gets this right and this is a throwback nod to the 1895 bottle. The first bottle that Jack ever used, he was kind of notorious for not believing in putting whiskey in a bottle. He'd send everybody a barrel, but finally his nephew, Mr. Motlow there convinced him to use a bottle and the legend has it. Back in the day, there were all these fancy round bottles and maybe a little snarky towards his nephew. He said if we're going to put it in the bottle, we'll put it in that old square one.

(01:04:30):
Perhaps no better decision ever been made, but it had the embossing on it. The letters of course our DSP Tennessee number one, I'll also call out on the side it says DSP Tennessee fourth. Yeah, there's two different DSP numbers. Number four is our bottling hall permit number. So there's no other distillery, it's all right here in Lynchburg at Jack Daniels. But our bottling hall that was built in 1972, they registered that under another permit. I don't know why I was, I wasn't even alive in 1972. But that's why you're going to see both of those numbers. I know you'll get questions on that, but what a gorgeous bottle. And I liken it too with our 10 year old release, the car that was drawn, we had our design team hand draw the old car around the tint to mimic the actual car that was done on the 10 year old whiskey that Jack himself did. Very nice. It's really bringing it liquid package everything together. That 1895 bottle would've been the bottle that Jack was using in 1897 of course when the bottle and bond act was passed.

Drew (01:05:37):
So I had seen in travel retail for a long time, the bottle in bond that was there, this is not exactly the same product is it?

Chris (01:05:48):
It's not similar, definitely not the same. And if you have a bottle of that bottle and bond offering would love for you to do a comparison cuz it'll be a really interesting comparison and see about the aging and the maturation of our whiskey here in Lynchburg because we are actually targeting specific barrels within a season. So the travel retail offering is a standard 100 proof offering of the classic old number seven of course within one season. And all of all that goes into bottle and bond for this bonded version which is going to be a global launch in domestic markets, different markets around the world. We are targeting and you can see the color on that. I mean that's just really rich and dark. We are actually going in and targeting barrels that are coming outta locations that are giving a much darker color. Obviously the color is very impactful on the flavor because color is barrel and so that is going to influence the aroma, the flavor, the finish of the whiskey, more extraction of oak into the liquid. So this will be a bolder version even of the GTR version of bot and bond and it's certainly a bolder version of the classic old number seven. So if you have a glass there, you've got a little cup here.

Drew (01:07:07):
So is also, it was interesting to hear you do this in what some distilleries would probably boast of as small batch because you're only doing 200 barrels I think on in these batches.

Chris (01:07:21):
Yeah, funny enough, any individual batch of any Jack Daniels product is not bigger than 200 barrels really. And we're dumping more than 200 barrels a day, but we're creating batches that are no bigger than a bottling tank that we're approving to be shipped down to the bottling line pump down and into the bottles. And so the amount of liquid that those tanks hold is only 200 barrels worth. So that's basically the batch size for almost all Jack Daniels other than obviously single barrel is one barrel.

Drew (01:07:52):
Yeah. And what's the age on this? Because we know it has to be at least four years.

Chris (01:07:57):
So this is going to somewhere around four and a half, it's going to be right in there between four and five we are able to drive and that's why I said it'd be great to pick up a bottle of that GTR bottle in the bond if you have it for comparison and just see the natural flavor impact that location and barrel house will create. And so you can see it in the color, but when you nose it, I mean you get a lot of sweetness that jumps out too. There's a lot more of that confectionary sweetness that comes through kind of a heavy caramel brown sugar.

Drew (01:08:31):
Of course the banana nu breads the first thing I always note, but this has a lot of rye smell to it. It's got a lot of rye and oak that come through on the nose for me. And what I found fascinating about this is that I always say if you let rye sit in the barrel for too long, it kind of loses its personality. But maybe because these have aged much faster or gotten that darker liquid that somehow you've kept the personality of the rye, which is only 8%. And that's the other part that shocks me, but have allowed it to also blend with the oak influence that's coming in there as well. And so it's a really interesting marriage of those 2 cents.

Chris (01:09:19):
Yeah, it honestly drew, that's one of the things when I started working on rye whiskeys that surprised me because a lot of times longer in the barrel you're pulling more spice from the barrel, a different type of spice than rice spice. And now suddenly you, you've got this competing and kind of butting heads against each other in this character. But one of the things that we have found even with our rye whiskey here, which is 70% rye, we like a little more age on it, roughly a year to two years more than for the target range. I'm painting a very broad brushstroke but we've been sort of surprised at how our rye whiskey continues to develop a richness as it ages and you don't have that competing spiciness and so you're, you get that oak but it's almost a complimentary type of oak that goes along with the spice from thery.

Drew (01:10:18):
And so what's the price point going to be on this whiskey?

Chris (01:10:23):
This is going to be a little bit above our gentleman Jack whiskey should be around 30, maybe $35 depending on the market. It does vary in state to state even here in the US and of course around the world it does, but it's going to be somewhere in there. Our friends on the sales side are probably getting nervous when I start talking about price cuz that is not my role at all. I'm just going to give you that range and we'll leave it at that if that's

Drew (01:10:49):
Okay. I think the thing that people are probably more concerned about is that when 10 came out there was a limited supply and so it became expensive and hard to find and now good luck finding it. Yeah. What I find interesting about this one is that I almost find this as a blend between getting single barrel 10 because it's got that okie influence to it and regular Jack Daniels that it has. It's kind of got a little personality of each

Chris (01:11:21):
And that was our exact target. We felt like we had a gap and where we were going with this is kind of between gentleman jack, super soft and light around that $30 price point and then you go all the way to single barrel and even barrel proof single barrel, which should be 50, $60. And so there's this gap, we didn't have anything between 30 and 50 bucks and we felt like we could could develop a very big bold whiskey rich hit, a great PI price point with all that history with the bob and bond and the bottle itself. And that's the target for that. And I think it's going to be a fantastic sipper. It's going to be great on the rocks. It's going to be a dynamite classic cocktail whiskey. You get so much to cut

Drew (01:12:06):
Through. I don't know if it's just because of the association of Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola, but I get a cola note out of this whiskey too. It's like there's cinnamon, there's that oak and rye coming in there but then all of a sudden this cola note comes in, which is really interesting.

Chris (01:12:23):
Yeah, I mean kind of that cinnamon confectionary spice, it's almost a citrus peel to it as well, which is also very common in spice. So absolutely I think you're kind of getting that inherent kind of character that our barrels really drive into the whiskey and that's really showcasing the barrel profile there at a hundred proof. It's really dark rich barrels. That's what we're targeting within the distilling season for the bonded product.

Drew (01:12:52):
And I think that the other piece of this too is because of the heaviness of the rye in this whole experience that the Jack Daniels rye fans will warm to this as well because it does bring so much of that character in as well. So excellent job on that whiskey. So this other whiskey triple mash is a very interesting idea in that it is a blended whiskey. We actually got to taste the components when we were sitting there so honored to be the first outside of Jack Daniels to get a chance to taste these whiskeys. And so what you've done is you've taken 60% rye, 20% American single malt and 20% Tennessee whiskey, all charcoal mellowed, all I guess aged separately and then blended together to make this particular product. How did you come about this idea of doing this?

Chris (01:13:53):
Yeah, well there's a lot of talk with our innovation team around blending and we don't typically blend at all here. I don't really consider myself a blender. I've worked for great blenders, I think I've learned a little bit from working with those folks but it's not what I would tell you. I would hang my hat on so to speak. But we've been making three different straight whiskeys here since 2013. Of course the classic Tennessee whiskey, the old number seven recipe, our rye whiskey, 70% rye, 12% mal barley, 18% corn. And we've been making malt whiskey. So what we would deem an American version of a single malt even though I know there's no regulations on that, at least not yet, but it's 100% malted barley grain bill all done here after distillery charcoal mellow, and then aged in our own new toasted and charo barrels every time.

(01:14:50):
And so we have a nice mix of different locations and different recipes now that we can blend. And so we said, okay, we'll do that. We'll start blending as American blended whiskey can be actually a very small percentage of whiskey if you choose. And so one of the things I said, look, it's going to be a hundred percent straight whiskey. It's a blend of straight whiskey first of all. And then as we started looking and digging through inventory, it became apparent that we were doing all three within the same distilling season. And so this is a bottled and bond blended American whiskey. Each of these whiskeys were fully bottled and bond regulated mixed together after they're fully aged minimum of four years. This one's a little bit older. I said earlier we kind of like our rye to be a little older. This is 60% rye.

(01:15:40):
So that is the base that we're using really for this blend. And so this is about five and a half or so about a year older than what we just tasted. And so 60% rye, our rye whiskey has this really interesting sweet note up front. You get some of the fruit that we've talked about from our yeast all using the same yeast and then the malt a hundred percent malt barley on its own, not as super flavorful grain, not nearly as sweet as corn, not as spicy as rye. We quickly learned why our friends over in Scotland make great malt whiskeys with things like peat sherry casks and different things that they do to add flavor. And so the malt itself standalone, we have the benefit of the new charo barrel and that's really going to drive the character of the malt. I get almost like a brown biscuit or toasted piece of bread, the creamy mouth feel right in the center where the spiciness of thery starts to pop out.

(01:16:37):
And so it's this really interesting mouth feel with the spiciness that go on. And then 20% Tennessee whiskey though number seven recipe just adds a little bit of sweetness on the back end for the finish. So it is really unique. I don't know of any other products like this out there, which is exciting. Also makes me a bit nervous and I go a lot. But I think the complexity of this, I would encourage if you get a bottle of this, try it neat first and you can certainly develop some cocktails with it. But I would recommend trying it neat first to taste that complexity on the liquid.

Drew (01:17:13):
So this is a whiskey that I compare when I talk about SCOs. There are certain SCOs that I really like because they're not something that you can drink when you're hanging out with friends and get the full experience out of them because some whiskeys demand, you pay a little bit of attention to them to get the full benefit of the whiskey because there's a complexity and sometimes depending on your mood, you'll pull out one flavor, next time you taste it you might pull out another flavor. And so when I had this originally along with the bonded, I appreciated the bonded right off the bat and I was getting what it was and I was like, wow, this triple mash is interesting but I'm not a hundred percent on it. When I started doing tastings at home, it flipped. I suddenly was like, wow, this is really interesting.

(01:17:59):
There's a lot of different stuff going on in this whiskey I think because it has an interesting mash bell. And I actually ended up doing the calculations because as we were sitting there doing this tasting originally I'm going, okay, we got all these different mash bills and then we have 60% rye, 20%, 20%. So I did the calculations to figure out this is 43.6% rye, 29.6% malted barley and 26.8% corn. So it actually is rye first, malted barley second and corn third. And so that is a fascinating mash bill and what it does is it really does bring out different character because that rye is now getting is out front, but then that mal barley working along with it is kind of adding some different character to it. And so it's the first jack whiskey that I've had that doesn't necessarily jump out with the banana note. It is fruity but it doesn't, the banana note isn't as strong on this one. To me it's more, and the rye, you would think with a higher percentage of rye that the rye would really jump out, but the rye actually is just nicely kind of packaged in there with kind of a honey note and a caramel note that's coming in there. So it, it's just fascinating. Did you play with a bunch of different percentages with this to try to get it nail it down?

Chris (01:19:26):
Yeah, I mean we knew we wanted to do the rye with the bass and then it was about just kind of pairing them all in the Tennessee whiskey with it. So there are a couple versions but we settled on this pretty quick.

Drew (01:19:37):
Yeah, really nice flavor. The rye, the banana comes out maybe a hint more on the pallet like apricot coming in caramel again and then a nice kind of cinnamon spice that I get towards the end. And you taste the char actually a little bit on this. The barrel char kinda lingers a little bit on the fish. So it's unlike any other Jack Daniels whiskey I I've had. So it's really interesting that you can pull some of the character notes out that you're familiar with, but this kind of has its own personality.

Chris (01:20:14):
Yeah, for sure. It's really amazing.

Drew (01:20:16):
Well kind of gimme an idea then of your thoughts on Triple Match and what you were trying to achieve overall with it.

Chris (01:20:25):
Yeah, I think first of all we wanted something unique. I think this is like I said, it hasn't really been done, at least not that I know of. Maybe it has and I'm unaware even when we got the label approval, I didn't know I'd never seen a blended whiskey. It was also qualifies bald and bond. And so I didn't really know even how that would go through that process through the ttb but was pleasantly surprised and excited once we got the approval on that and everything. And I think it's about, the interesting thing is you take something that with American blended whiskey as we talked about, is a really wide opening of blending different things, but then yet it's also bottle and bond, which is arguably the most restrictive regulation in whiskey. And so combining those two things, it's really interesting. And then also to start to introduce the world to American malt whiskey from Jack Daniels and 100% malt all made here which is also really, really exciting.

(01:21:36):
And I think the way that malt compliments the blend and you described it perfectly it is really interesting cuz you can really get each of the components of it. I find a lot of blended spirits, maybe it's not so easy to pick out each individual component, but this one clearly they come through and it works really well. So to me it's exciting because it's new, it's different. I think people will be really intrigued after tasting it to even maybe get a taste of our American malt by itself. And so hopefully it won't be much longer where we can offer that as well.

Drew (01:22:24):
That'll be interesting to see how that goes. The other thing that I'm sure people would love to see in this bonded series would be the

Chris (01:22:31):
Rye. Yep, absolutely. I love everything about the series. I love the bottle and bond act, the regulation kind of the transparency that it requires, more so on the aging side from one season and everything. But again, it gives us the opportunity to tell our story and our process and how we make whiskey and that's important, very important to me. And so where I'm getting to is this bottle and bond series that we're referring to it now. We are continuing to plan for the future of it and we are excited to continue to innovate. We've got a lot of great projects going on now, a lot of great things in barrels now and it's about getting it right and showing different types of whiskeys and more different grains and different grain bills that we're going to continue to produce here in Lynchburg cuz we've got a great team and a great distillery. And so I'm excited to keep pushing and seeing what we can do.

Drew (01:23:34):
Fantastic. Chris, I appreciate your time. I appreciate you walking us through the distillery and Lexi as well, talking through everything. And again, answering all of my 10 million questions cuz you get the master distiller there. You're like I, I gotta ask the questions. Here's my chance to really get in deep on things. And I think we covered a lot of those in the episode and gave people really more of a sense that Jack Daniels is a brand that they see on their shelves. And yes, it's around the world and we have our own experience with Jack Daniels in our own lives, but to think a little bit deeper about where it came from and its tradition and understanding again that you are trying as the next generation of distiller to keep all of this alive, I think is very important and brings people closer to the brand.

Chris (01:24:32):
Yeah, well thank you. And that's the most important thing to me. I'm very proud of the whiskey we make and of our team here and we've got a lot of great people and it's really unique. I get to travel the world in non covid times and look forward to getting back out there now. But people will ask me, how did Jack Daniels become this success? And people gravitate to it all over the world and certainly there's countless references of movies and musicians and things over the years, but it's made in one place, in one little town, the second smallest county in Tennessee. And it's made by the families that have been doing it over 150 years. And I think there's an authenticity there that people do gravitate towards. And you're right, it is a very well known brand and some people that don't know it beyond just the black label square bottle, they don't understand what what's behind it. And I think that's so exciting about these new products is it gives us another opportunity to just tell people what we do.

Drew (01:25:38):
Yeah, absolutely. Well cheers to you and all of the distillers before you and thanks for giving us a great product.

Chris (01:25:45):
Thank you, drew. I appreciate it. Really enjoyed it.

Drew (01:25:48):
And if you wanna learn more about Jack Daniels, we of course go to jack daniels.com, but you can also find the story of Jack Daniel on Whiskey Lores Stories podcast back in season three, along with my interview with historian Nelson Eddie from episode two of Whiskey Lore, the interviews or if you go to episode three, you'll get Fawn Weaver talking about his relationship with Uncle Nearest and we go even further into depth with former master distiller Jeff Rettes experience at Jack Daniels on episode 45. And you can watch my tasting videos of bonded and triple mash youtube.com/whiskey lore, as well as blind tastings of Single Barrel Jimmy Bedford's, master distiller edition and Sinatra Select. And you'll see some of my private tour with Chris and Lexi this week on Instagram and Facebook. You find all these links and more along with show notes and transcripts by heading to whiskey-lore.com. Thanks for joining me this week. I'm your host Hanish, and until next time, cheers and Slung Ofk whiskey Lores a production of Travel fuel's Life, L L C.