Around the Barrel Ep059/Re058 - Chris Fletcher  

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Working with a spirit of innovation involves a constant process of unlearning and relearning. You want to trim away what is not needed within your new process, and yet refine what has worked in the past. When you lay that new template over the business of whiskey production, you also have to factor in the idea of hurry up and wait, before you can make more changes and move a new product into its final form.

 

On this episode, we talk once again with Master Distiller Chris Fletcher about the brand new global travel retail product American single malt finished in Oloroso sherry casks, about how the word single doesn't always correlate with the word simple, and about how this new endeavor just might bring about a new set of frequently asked questions Around the Barrel.

 

Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson.

 

Chris Fletcher: Hi, my name is Chris Fletcher. I'm the master distiller at the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Chris Fletcher, welcome back to Around the Barrel.

 

Chris Fletcher: Thanks, Lucas.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: It's an exciting time around there. Plenty of things going on. But it seems like I can't turn on my computer or look at my social feed or whatever without seeing some new iteration of a Jack Daniel's product filling the airwaves. This is a particularly interesting and a long-awaited one. Talk to us a little bit about the American single malt release that's getting ready to release to global travel retail.

 

Chris Fletcher: Yeah. So I think long-awaited is a great way to describe it. It's a lot of work.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: As most whiskey is.

 

Chris Fletcher: Yes, for sure. And a lot of different things went into doing this. We started making malt whiskey, 100% malted barley whiskey – I think the first batch was in late 2012. And sporadically went through it. And at that time, you kind of do things slow and small because you don't exactly know what you're doing, to be honest. There's some experimentation, some trial and error.

 

And so, eventually, we felt like, after a few batches, we had things ironed out in the way that we wanted them. And then it becomes the process of what's it going to do in a barrel? And so if you think about that – I mean, this has been a decade in the making. And sometimes that's what it takes, especially when it's completely new grain bill, and just one grain, just malted barley, no corn, no rye. There's a lot to learn from a flavor standpoint, from a process standpoint, what could we do to layer flavor.

 

And it kind of culminated in what we're at today, with our American single malt. Spent between five and six years in the first barrel. Of course, the new oak barrel that we always use, toasted and charred, and then finished for a couple years in Oloroso sherry. And so that was a decision that we thought a lot about. And we don't do much finishing here. However, we felt like it was appropriate and right to do some finishing with this malt. And I think the results speak for themselves.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Sure. And then external to even the distillery itself, you had definitions of what is an American single malt happening industry-wide, as well. So there were all these kind of things that were pointing towards this destination for what this product could potentially be, right?

 

Chris Fletcher: Yeah, that's right. And even still today, there's no official definition.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: That's what I thought, that it hadn't been locked down.

 

Chris Fletcher: It is being talked about, and it's exciting. I think we certainly viewed this project, from the beginning, as doing this in a very American way. And what I mean by that is, with all respect to Scottish style whiskeys and Old World style whiskeys, very different processes of making whiskey. Number one, bourbons, Tennessee whiskeys, rye whiskeys, obviously you're talking about usually three grains in the mix, mostly corn or mostly rye. In the world of malt whiskeys, coming traditionally from Europe, single malts, it is 100% malt whiskey.

 

So you start to learn about things that – why their processes have been set up, for hundreds of years, differently than ours. So the last thing, as a distiller, that we would want to do is to try to take a square peg, round hole approach. And so this was very much about doing it the way that we believe Mr. Jack would do it, right? And so that's what I mean by that. Certainly a new take, a new spin, different flavor profiles. Some traditional aspects, but certainly, this was never thought of as trying to replicate that they would do, our friends over in Europe.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: And you're such a historian of, obviously, what Mr. Jack accomplished in his work and life. What's in the vaults? What's in the history of the company? Were there any single malt products that Mr. Jack did back in the day?

 

Chris Fletcher: No. Oddly enough, there's not. A lot of our innovation, you're right, Lucas, it's very, very rooted in our traditions, and kind of recreating some stuff. And that's a huge part of inspiration. I mean, me personally, but I speak for so many great whiskey makers here in Lynchburg. Because of our family connections – I think we have almost 70% of our employees either have or have had a family member that work here at the distillery. So you can imagine. History is always very close in mind when we do things that are new.

 

But this was a twist. This was really a step out of the box, and hopefully seen as something fun, interesting, refreshing, as a single malt whiskey from Jack Daniel's. And so this is not going to remind anybody of Old No. 7, right out of the box. As to where some of our great single barrel Tennessee whiskeys, even our aged state of Tennessee whiskeys, 10-year-old, 12-year-old, I mean, the heart of that whiskey is Old No. 7. Hundred percent same recipe, same barrel. It's just kind of tweaking things here and there to push different flavor profiles.

 

But this is completely different. And so that was part of the learning. At the very beginning, as opposed to the Tennessee whiskey recipe, it being 80% corn and only 12% malted barley, and then the balance, 8% being rye. This is 100% malted barley. And so you don't get any sweetness from corn, and you don't get any of the earthy spiciness out of rye. It's not there.

 

Now, barley's flavor to me – I mean, you certainly get that toasted cereal grain note, a little bit of an earthiness, not very sweet, not very pungent at all. There's just not much there. And so when we first distilled it, it took us a while, and we looked at different types of malt, and we settled on a pale malt. And that's what we continue to use to try to give it a little more flavor off the bat. Off the still, I should say. Not off the bat, but off the still, quite literally.

 

We do fully mellow it. And so it does soften the grainy notes and allows sort of a natural inherent sweetness to the spirit to come through more. Obviously, mellowing does not add any of that flavor. But by removing a little bit of that cereal grain note, it kind of softens and allows some of the more subtle, fruity notes to pop out of there a little bit more.

 

And then in that oak barrel, toasted and charred up barrel, you get a lot of traditional cues in there. You get great color. You get great mouthfeel. You're going to get some classic American whiskey barrel vanilla, caramel, a little brown sugar. But we felt like we would be walking an extremely fine line between balancing those sweet notes out of that barrel and then the spirit itself, the malt just being a little fragile, because you have to think, traditionally, 100% malt whiskeys are aged in used American whiskey barrels. So you're not getting all that extraction. You're getting very subtle flavors that you're slowly building into the whiskey. And ours goes much faster with it being the first use, and our heat here in Tennessee as well, as we can all relate to right now. And so yeah, that was where we felt like this spirit could really get over-oaked if we're not careful.

 

And then that's where the idea of finishing came along. And it was on a trip. We were over in Scotland, actually, in – I want to say 2019. We were having a wonderful time over with friends at partner distilleries within the company, and others, all over the Scottish countryside. It's beautiful, and able to absorb a lot of knowledge and history.

 

And that's when we thought, "You know what? I think sherry would really round this out." And so that's when it started to shift, and we started working with our partners and ended up sourcing Oloroso sherry out of Andalusia, Spain. Shipped over three or four cargo containers on a ship to Lynchburg. And so, yeah, that's where we're at. We dumped some five-and-a-half, six-year-old malt, and refilled it into the sherry casks, and that's what led us to where we are today.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Yeah. Were there any other types of spirits, something in that realm, that you thought about before landing on the sherry casks? Or might there be, in the future, different iterations of that as this line continues to evolve?

 

Chris Fletcher: We zeroed in on the sherry actually while we were still in Scotland.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Oh, I gotcha. Okay.

 

Chris Fletcher: Just from tasting. We were able to go through barrel houses. And I mean, I was tasting whiskeys that were older than I am.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Yeah, sure.

 

Chris Fletcher: I mean, that's pretty darn fun, right?

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Well, yeah, but that's not that hard to do. You're a young man.

 

Chris Fletcher: I guess in Scotland it's not that hard to do. In Tennessee, it would be all gone. It would just completely evaporate. But anyway, you kind of learn. A hundred percent malted barley whiskeys, you come to that realization – this process in Scotland, of generations of using peat or using a different finishing cask, or maybe not even a finishing cask, might be the only cask the spirit ever sees. Certainly, there's a wide variety. I don't mean to paint that broad of brushstroke.

 

But it is easy to see why different sources of flavor are used to add to the spirit, because there's just not a lot of flavor in barley. There's just not a lot there. I mean, heck, I would even say with beer, some good hops certainly add some complexity. That's something that we learned in doing this. And that's what I said at the beginning. When we start, we start pretty small. We don't make a lot of it. This product's only going in GTR, and we released a little bit as a single barrel release last year. But you don't just go all out and do Old No. 7 level of production right off the bat. You just don't know how it's going to turn out.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: And we can tend to forget sometimes, that there are some pretty significant Jack Daniel's product lines that we don't typically get to see here in the US. I think they show up primarily, again, in that global travel retail space. Is there a challenge in trying to formulate products that are designed to be enjoyed outside the US? Everybody's pallet's different all over the world.

 

Chris Fletcher: Yeah. I guess in the past, some of that thought and approach was applied with innovation. But recently, not as much. I mean, it's really about a couple of things, Lucas. And I mentioned our history and our heritage and things that – I mean, literally, recreating our aged state of Tennessee whiskeys that Mr. Jack himself did. I mean, no-brainer. I mean, how fun is that? That's so much fun. And then a product like Triple Mash, that has never been done before. And to offer stuff like the Coy Hill High Proof that we had barrels over 150 proof, and really never been done with a standard-sized barrel, with that 125-proof entry.

 

And so this falls under that latter category of something new, different, and fun. And I mean, I would love to have this perfect fifty-fifty balance of innovation, and this one is a perfect throwback to our history and traditions, and then this one is kind of on its ear a bit, because it's just fun. I mean, heck, we have fun here. We're making whiskey, and we got such a great team of people and distillers here. I mean, a great distillery. It's just fun. And that's what I want. Hopefully consumers, our friends out there that are buying a bottle, or that are out and are able to order a cocktail with one of our new products, is to have fun with it. And enjoy responsibly, of course, absolutely.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Always.

 

Chris Fletcher: And enjoy a nod to the history of making Old No. 7 here in Lynchburg, but also enjoy pushing boundaries and new categories and new offerings, too.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Yeah. Now, has there been a consistent make of these American malt spirits in the interim timeframe? Are we going to be able to see this grow beyond the global travel retail space, and maybe be a little more available in America?

 

Chris Fletcher: Possibly. When we look at where things go, there's always a lot of really important thought behind that. And that's not really my sandbox.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Fair enough.

 

Chris Fletcher: To be honest, our friends over in the marketing department, they amuse me by listening to my opinions, but that's about it. So we'll see. I mean, we are making malt. I mean, malt is a component of the Triple Mash product that I mentioned a few minutes ago. The single malt. I think this American single malt is really a fantastic play in the global market, because here in the US – and I don't know how many of our listeners are US-based and how many are around the world – but a lot of parts of the world, if you just ask for whiskey, it is 100% going to be a Scotch whiskey. Blended Scotch whiskey is very, very, very much a global spirit. And American whiskey is still in its infancy in a lot of pockets of the world.

 

And I think that's really exciting for me, is for folks in a lot of these different global markets that they know single malt whiskeys and they know malt whiskeys in general. And to see that coming from an American distiller, all coming from Lynchburg, Tennessee, in this one single little tiny place, this little dot in southern Middle Tennessee, and yet, with the brand of Jack Daniel's, hopefully, is known somewhat in these markets around the world. I think it's going to be a lot of fun just to see the reaction and get the feedback and learn, and then go from there, because it's a big thing.

 

We listen. We try to listen to what our consumers and friends are interested in trying and wanting to do. And I think you've seen a bit of that in our innovation as well. And, historically, we've done that too. When people were wanting lighter, softer, easy-mixing spirits, absolutely we were listening at that time. And now, certainly in the US market, that's been completely changed. There's been a 180. And with the things that we're offering now, we're balancing that back out. And so it's going to be fun to see how this one does.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Talk a little bit about the packaging design for this one, because it's kind of reminiscent of the bonded stuff that has made a big splash in the marketplace as well. It's got some kind of colors in the labeling that we don't tend to see on Jack Daniel's products. So can you talk about some of the thought processes are, and what the physical package looks like?

 

Chris Fletcher: Yeah. I mean, I think it's a beautiful package.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Yeah, absolutely.

 

Chris Fletcher: I think just starting with the glass, it's just amazing. It's classic square, tall glass bottle with the elongated neck and cork finish. And the fluting around the square bottle, it's sort of reminiscent, to me, to the original Gentleman Jack package that started back in the late '80s. And I just think it's a gorgeous, gorgeous bottle. A lot of glass. It's heavy. It's very premium. And so I think it starts with that, which is amazing. I can't take any credit on any design. I can barely write, let alone do any artwork.

 

But the blue and the dark wine color. The blue has been an American malt color that you see across, in not all, but in a lot of different brands that are out there in the category, in its infancy, has relied on that somewhat similar shade of blue. And to take that and then lay that wine color to signify the nod to the sherry cask as well. I think it communicates this is a very different product from Jack Daniel's, just like you said. And that's what we want. I mean, this is not going to taste like No. 7, in no way, shape, or form. And even the rye whiskey, I would tell you, is much closer to the Old No. 7 than the single malt will be. This is just a completely different spin on the flavor.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Yeah. As far as sourcing this particular single malt, same kind of sourcing that you do with– Is it the same malt that goes into your other products? Or is it a hybrid, something different that you took a little time to develop?

 

Chris Fletcher: It is different. And it took us a while to learn that, too, Lucas, to be honest. So our regular distiller's malt that we're using in a 12% throw in both the rye whiskey recipe and the Tennessee whiskey recipe, that's a very high protein malt. We want really high enzyme activity, so we're looking very closely at things like diastatic power, which is the enzymatic potential for the malt to break down starch, because we rely on malted barley to break down our starch. Here, we don't add any supplemental enzyme. That's a really, really important thing to me and our team, our distillers here. We know by doing that and relying on the malted enzyme package coming naturally out of the barley, it's slower, certainly less efficient, more expensive. You have to ship it in from places like Montana, and Idaho, Colorado, possibly Canada.

 

But it breaks down the starch coming from corn in the Tennessee whiskey recipe, or coming from rye in the rye whiskey recipe. It breaks it down, and feeds the yeast in fermentation a larger form of sugar called maltose, which is a double sugar, as opposed to supplementing with enzyme, which would be very aggressive and very efficient. And it would feed it a smaller form of sugar, glucose, a single sugar. So our fermentors here, we know we can measure that they are a maltose-fed fermentation. I would say low and slow.

 

And so there's a lot of that fruity character that gets into our whiskeys. Really, our yeast lays down a lot of that. And I think by extending that fermentation time and letting that yeast really work, and have to work a little harder, by breaking down the double sugar instead of the single. Number one, that's the traditional way to make whiskey, right? Everybody would have had to have used multigrain to break down starches, right? There's no amount of time cooking with water and heat that's going to break down starch. It's insoluble. So you have to have these enzymatic powers, the diastatic power I mentioned, amylase, which is the biggest one that we're looking at to do this.

 

And so taking that really high protein malt at 100%, we quickly learned it really dials up those grassy, grainy notes. And so we actually shifted a little ways into, very early on when we were making this stuff a decade ago, to what would be more like a brewer's malt, because when you shift the recipe to 100%, suddenly there is no corn or rye. I mean, all the grain has been malted. And so you don't have to have quite the same amount of power of enzymatic breakdown. You can have a plumper, richer, maybe more extract-filled, or carbohydrate, starch-filled form of barley. And so we settled on a form of a pale malt that would be more closely associated with beer making, to be honest. And so we've worked with our malt suppliers on that, and finding what we think is best for us to move forward. So that's just one more thing. One more thing to add to the list.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Yeah, exactly. If you in any way, shape, or form think this process is easy and that you can do a straight swap of malt for malt based on products, that is totally not the case. Obviously, you've got to break those things down into how they interact, not only with the multigrain grain bill on the Old No. 7 and the rye, but then when it's all one thing, how does it interact with itself, in a lot of ways.

 

Chris Fletcher: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's about trying to, at each step of the way, maximize the flavor potential in the way that we want it for our product. And so, I mean, you can do it the other way. We choose not to.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Right, sure. I imagine, in your interaction with people all over the world, you already deal with the question pretty frequently, "Is Old No. 7 a bourbon?" Does this product now open it up to, "Is this a Scotch?"

 

Chris Fletcher: You know what, that's the first time I've been asked that.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Really?

 

Chris Fletcher: It is, yeah.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Okay.

 

Chris Fletcher: But I love it. I love that you asked, because I think how perfect of a scenario is this? Obviously, Scotch is a product of Scotland. And bourbon can be made anywhere in the US. So in Tennessee, you can make bourbon. And Tennessee whiskey, look, it is bourbon. It does qualify as bourbon. I think we've talked about this before.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Many times.

 

Chris Fletcher: We choose to label, advertise, market our product as Tennessee whiskey, because of the charcoal mellowing process, that we do feel very strongly– This is how Mr. Jack learned, very famously from Mr. Green, how to make whiskey. And there were articles written in newspapers about Mr. Jack, about how he insisted on charcoal, and changing it on this frequency, and make sure that it softens and, as we say, mellows the spirit. And so the thing is a lot of people don't understand that that's perfectly fine in bourbon production. And there have been different forms of charcoal filtering done within bourbon production. Now, not necessarily the same as what we do, obviously.

 

But long story short, Tennessee whiskey is bourbon. It has to be. And so you can put Old No. 7 on a bourbon list. It does not make me angry at all. It's perfectly fine. But we do choose to label it and advertise, as I said, as Tennessee whiskey.

 

So the correlation that I would draw, back to your question, why I think it's really appropriate for this product of our single malt is, within the world of Scotch whiskey, you've got Scotch whiskey, you've got blends, predominantly, they dominate by volume. And then you've got single malt within that. Now, that single malt is still Scotch whisky. However, it's different than a blended Scotch whiskey.

 

Well, in the US, you've got bourbon that can be made in all 50 states, can be made in Tennessee, can be made in Hawaii, could be made anywhere. And within the bourbon category, you've got Tennessee whiskey. So it is a form of bourbon, but it's geographically-restricted to the state of Tennessee. And process-wise, it has to see some form of that maple charcoal before it goes into a barrel. So it's just within the category, a more specific definition of bourbon whiskey.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Makes sense to me. What else is on the horizon for the bulk of '23 and into '24? Obviously, we've got the bonded rye release that's on the horizon as well. The special release liquid has already been announced. What else can you tease us with for the balance of this year?

 

Chris Fletcher: Some people have called it the year of rye. And I think with our rye whiskey, we're still learning with it. And we'll continue to learn with our malt too, Lucas. And right now it's GTR, and I think there's a little going into our US military channel as well, which is fantastic. But we'll learn how it goes. Right now, I'd like to think we're fine-tuning the rye. I think moving our rye into our bottled-in-bond package, just based on the feedback of the bonded Tennessee whiskey and the Triple Mash bonded product that we've done, it just makes total sense. I think anybody could agree with that. Dialing it up to 100 proof. What a beautiful package the bonded package is. Fantastic for cocktails. And of course, rye is a wonderful cocktail base. Our bonded rye in a classic Old Fashioned with just that twist of citrus on top, man, it is just beautiful. Beautiful.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Haven't had it yet. Looking forward to it though, and certainly the bonded products. Talk about perfect proof point, perfect designation, and perfect price point on those things as well. So it's just such a consumer-friendly, friend of Mr. Jack friendly, expression that really does revolutionize that space, especially the cocktail world. Yeah.

 

Chris Fletcher: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, obviously the easy mixing nature of Old No. 7 will never be triumphed. Obviously, Jack and Coke, and the endless possibility of a classic highball, fresh lemonade. I mean, obviously our version of the whiskey sour is a Lynchburg Lemonade. We have our own house call of whiskey sour. I mean, just Old No. 7 is so easily enjoyed. Even when the weather is 100 degrees, you can make a really light, refreshing cocktail with it. But the bonded series dials up those whiskey cues. It certainly does. And it's certainly geared more towards those classic cocktail moments, right?

 

Or some of these folks behind the bar, they can be really creative and do their own riffs on all these different classic cocktails. And they want to dig in, experiment, and try, and be innovative, too. And that's what that bonded series is really about, is giving them an incredibly balanced, rich, big flavor profile to then take in any direction. So by that balance of flavor, they're not going to have to cover anything up, I hope. Something that's just overtly oaky or overtly spicy. I think a little bit you have to, right off the bat, tamp that down and then build flavor back up. And so that's our thought with our bonded series, is to create incredible balance of flavor that's able to go in any direction they want to go.

 

So yeah. The bonded series is still going to be a big focus of ours. It's super exciting. You know how transparent we want to be, and tell people exactly how we make our whiskey. And that bottled-in-bond designation is the most transparent you can be as far as regulatory things go. Disclosing exactly where we make our whiskey and how we make our whiskey, and we're always going to do that. And I think that, just the timing was right through that lens for bottled-in-bond whiskey from Jack Daniel's, and also for the flavor attributes that I mentioned.

 

Single Barrel Special Release will be continued. We've just dropped a Heritage Barrel Finished Special Release Rye, and that's been very well-received so far. It's fresh off the truck as well. Keeping with the 2023, year of rye theme. We will continue to do our more experimental release here in Lynchburg, mostly here at the distillery, but also distributed across the state of Tennessee, our Distillery Series, as we call it. So just to give people something that make the trek down to Lynchburg. It's not exactly right off the freeway. And it takes a little effort. And to give them something unique, to get that they can't get back home.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Exactly, exactly. Well, again, Chris, as always, thank you for your time. Thank you for your efforts. Thank you for these new products we get to enjoy, and keep turning that stuff out there in Lynchburg.

 

Chris Fletcher: Yeah, thank you, Lucas. We'll keep doing some fun stuff for sure. It's a fun time to be making whiskey right now. And people are still enjoying our classic No. 7 around the world, and Gentleman Jack, and all those things. But it's also fun to be able to do some new stuff. So we hope everybody enjoys. And I'll just remind everybody one more time to please enjoy responsibly.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Absolutely. Thanks for joining us Around the Barrel.

 

Chris Fletcher: Thank you.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Thanks for checking out this episode of Around the Barrel. You can find archived episodes of Around the Barrel on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and more, plus on the web at jackdaniels.com/podcast. And if you like what you hear, please follow, rate and review while you're at it. Cheers, y'all, and join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel. 

 

Your friends at Jack Daniel's remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel's and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2023, Jack Daniel's. Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by Volume, 80 proof. Distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.