The Bite Magazine Issue 17

I t was only last year that renowned whiskey brand Jack Daniel’s paid tribute to leg- endary crooner and Ol’ Blue Eyes Frank Sinatra with their ultra-premium limited edition Sinatra Century to commemorate what would have been the singer’s 100 th birth- day. This year, it’s the turn of the brand founded by Jack Daniel in 1866, which has now turned 150 years old and is still going strong. The whiskey pioneer, whose real name was Jasper ‘Jack’ Newton Daniel, started learning the art of making whiskey at a young age, after losing both parents early in his life and being taken in by a local minister who owned a general store and a small distillery. He applied a process which was known as the ‘Lincoln County Processes’ but was sometimes called ‘charcoal mellowing’ by some, however the town of Lynchburg named it, ‘The Extra Blessing’, an old-time process that Daniel himself insisted on using and one that “has been in continuous use by the Jack Daniel Distillery ever since.” Once it has been distilled to 140-proof, the clear, unaged whiskey is sent on what is con- sidered to be a painstaking journey whereby “drop by drop, it crawls through our hand- crafted charcoal at a pace dictated by gravity and nothing else.” The process takes over a week to complete and once this is done, the whiskey is transformed or even ‘blessed’ as the brand sometimes likes to describe it. It is thanks to this extra step that the distinctive smoothness that customers and connoisseurs alike have come to expect from Jack Daniel’s is imparted. And as the brand would boldly point out, their whiskey is “a Tennessee Whiskey and not bourbon.” Jack Daniel’s Master Distiller Jeff Arnett says, “Char- coal can accomplish in days what the barrel takes a couple of years to accomplish. And the added time and cost it takes to give our whiskey that head start before it goes into the barrels is well worth it. Pour yourself a glass of Jack Daniel’s and judge for yourself.” The following steps into making the whiskey product is very fascinating: thanks to Lynch- burg’s Cave Spring Hollow which draws 800 gallons of water from miles below the Earth’s surface every minute, the town’s greatest natural resource is said to be the whiskey brand’s life- blood, a crisp, cool spring that maintains its 56 degrees temperature constantly. It may have been purchased by Daniel for a small fortune back then but it is through this oasis of pure, clean spring water that Jack Daniel’s whiskies continues to be the renowned and favourable beverages that it is today. No wonder Frank Sinatra enjoyed it so much. The cave’s layers of limestone is said to “naturally impart a variety of minerals to the water which contribute to the character of Jack Daniel’s. More importantly, the limestone also removes iron from the water. Iron definitely has its uses, but it’s absolutely horrible if you’re making whiskey,” says the brand. And as every bottle of Jack Daniel’s sold around the world is made with the water from this source, the Master Distiller has to ensure that it maintains the same balanced taste. The next stage is like trial by fire: three days a week and three times a day, pallets of hard sugar maple are stacked five feet high and doused in raw unaged whiskey before setting the wood ablaze. It may be seen as a waste of perfectly good whiskey but the brand explains that this is necessary as the inferno which peaks at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit until it burns down into smouldering embers produces pellets that are then raked over until it is finally cooled and used to slowly mellow their Tennessee Whiskey. Finally, the whiskey is ready when it’s ready: however, a number of things help decide how long a barrel of whiskey stays in the barrelhouse, including the barrel itself, and where it rests in the barrelhouse. It is said that whiskey on the upper floors of the barrelhouse, where the tem- perature changes are more extreme, tends to be more mature than those of the same age on the cooler, lower floors. This is why Jack Daniel’s believe that age is an unreliable way to deter- mine when a whiskey is ready, so the way the Master Distiller can tell that a whiskey is ready for bottling, is simply by taste. And it is thanks to this continued method that Jack Daniel’s is able to celebrate their 150 th anniversary with a brand new expression. Using the time-honoured process of combining the Distillery’s whiskey-making tradition with the artistry of modern-day craftsmanship, the grain bill for the expression is modelled on the Old No.7, the original number assigned to the dis- tillery for government registration according to Daniel’s biographer. It is seeped through ten feet of sugar maple charcoal before being stored in specially crafted American oak barrels, offering rich flavours and aromas, to truly commemo- rate 150 years of the Daniel Distillery. To create this unique one-off liquid, the whiskey is then barrelled and matured at the highest point in the Lynchburg Distillery, in the Angel’s Roost of the Coy Hill Barrelhouse where the winters are the coldest and the summers are the hottest, thus providing the maximum possible interac- tion between whiskey and wood. Finally, it is bottled at 100 proof to maintain the rich and complex flavour. This celebratory expression of Tennessee whiskey offered in a bespoke 1L weighted, decanter-style bottle and a commem- orative lined display case has sweet complexities of butterscotch and toffee upon first taste, fol- lowed by a luxurious, full, smooth and lingering finish with warm toasted oak. Jack Daniel’s 150 th Anniversary Tennessee Whiskey is now available exclusively in-store and online at Harvey Nichols. www.harveynichols.com 150 Years Old and Still Going Strong bite drinks