Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/597666
november 2015 / the tasting panel / 121 ow do you get people to notice your whiskey brand in today's crowded space? Keep doing what you've done for nearly 150 years. That's exactly what Jack Daniel's focuses on, year after year, distillation after distillation, because if it was good enough for Jack Daniel himself when he founded the company in 1866, it's cer- tainly good enough for the millions of Tennessee whiskey drinkers that continue to make this the top-selling American whiskey around the world. "It's an exciting time for Jack Daniel's because of the way we've done things over 149 years and everything traces back to Jack himself," says Chris Fletcher, Jack Daniel's Assistant Master Distiller, the first in the company's history. "We make whiskey truly with the same traditional methods, but we have better equipment now than even my granddad did. It helps us to reinvest to the process and stay true to it with as little variation as possible." The "granddad" he talks about is Frank Bobo, Jack's Daniel's fifth Master Distiller, who would allow his young grandson to tag along at the distillery with him. Now, at 31, Fletcher works alongside Master Distiller Jeff Arnett, the seventh in a storied line of men to oversee the careful process to create the Jack Daniel's line of whiskies. Fletcher, who is a chemist by education, worked at Jack Daniel's parent company Brown-Forman in Louisville for nine years in research and develop- ment on Jack Daniel's and some of Brown-Forman's other whiskey brands. He takes that knowledge and puts it into new products like the 94-proof Single Barrel Select, but also to find new ways to help innovate the process while keeping with tradition. Jack Daniel's is the only Global Whiskey company that owns a cooperage and makes its own barrels. The company controls the distillation process from start to finish: making mash with malted barley, having their microbiology team bring in fresh yeast each week and even making its own barrels and burning wood by hand to create coal that allows the whiskey to "mellow." This is where freshly distilled bourbon slowly drips through ten feet of charcoal packed tightly into vats. When the spirit emerges, it NEARLY 150 YEARS IN, JACK DANIEL'S CONTINUES TO DOMINATE THE WHISKEY GAME Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Select.