It's More Than a Name. It's a Process, the Lincoln County Process.
It's More Than a Name. It's a Process, the Lincoln County Process.
We see that question asked a lot. And for us, the answer is simple: quite a bit.
When you look at our bottle, you’ll see the words “Tennessee Whiskey” printed right on the label. That isn’t just where it’s from. It’s a promise. It’s a declaration of character. It’s a line we drew in the sand a long, long time ago.
That name exists for one reason, and one reason alone: ten feet of charcoal.
Around here, we call it charcoal mellowing. It’s the extra step we’ve taken since the very beginning. It’s the step that defines us. And if you ask anyone at our Distillery, they’ll tell you it’s the step that makes Jack Daniel’s Jack.
It is also, to be frank, the hard way to do things. But Mr. Jack was never one for shortcuts.
To understand this story, you first have to understand the difference between a Tennessee Whiskey and a bourbon.
Now we’ve got a lot of respect for our bourbon-making friends. They make a fine product. And the truth is, we follow all the rules for making a good bourbon. We use a mash bill of at least 51% corn (ours is 80%). We distill it to a high standard. We age it in brand new, charred American white oak barrels. We tick all the boxes.
But then we do something they don’t.
When our whiskey comes off the still—when it’s brand new, 140-proof, and clear as the water from our Cave Spring—it doesn’t go straight to the barrel. Not by a long shot.
Instead, we send it on a journey. A long, slow journey.
When visitors to the Jack Daniel Distillery stand on the platform in the mellowing house, they stare down into one of our massive, ten-foot-tall vats. What they’re seeing is that journey’s beginning. We fill these vats, to the very brim, with charcoal. But not just any charcoal. It has to be charcoal made from hard sugar maple wood.
Then, we pump that new, un-matured whiskey into the top. And we let gravity do the rest.
It’s not a fast process. There’s no rushing it. It’s just drip... drip... drip... as that 140-proof spirit slowly seeps, drop by drop, through ten solid feet of tightly packed, fine-ground charcoal. What goes in the top as a clear, fiery spirit with a powerful corn bite comes out the bottom as something different.
It’s cleaner. It’s smoother. It’s...mellowed.
All the hard edges, the unwanted oils, the sharp notes that can make a young whiskey tough—the charcoal holds onto them. It pulls them out. It’s a subtractive process, taking away the bite. This is the Lincoln County Process. And it is the one and only reason we get to call our product "Tennessee Whiskey."
Mr. Jack didn't invent charcoal mellowing. But he was smart enough to perfect it and stick with it.
The idea of using charcoal to "clean" a spirit wasn't new. Folks had been doing it for ages. But back in the 1800s, here in the hills of Middle Tennessee, distillers had their own way of doing things. It was a whiskey-making custom, a piece of local wisdom. This part of the country, which was Lincoln County at the time, was known for it.
When young Jack Daniel left home, he found his way to the farm of a man named Dan Call. And on that farm, he learned the trade of whiskey-making. But the man who truly taught him the craft, the man who was the Master Distiller on that farm, was Jack’s friend and mentor: a man named Nathan 'Nearest' Green.
Nathan Green was a master of his craft. He knew the land, he knew the still, and he knew the local process. He understood what charcoal, and specifically sugar maple charcoal, could do for a spirit. He taught Jack how to make it, how to use it, and how to taste the difference.
Other distillers in this part of the country were also using this method. But as time went on, as the country got in more of a hurry, most of them let it go. It was too slow. It was too expensive. It was too much work.
Jack Daniel knew a good thing when he saw it. And he definitely knew a good thing when he tasted it.
He saw that this extra step wasn't just a filter. It was a transformation. It was the key to making a whiskey that was smooth and refined from the very start. It wasn't about stripping the character out; it was about locking the good character in, and getting rid of the rest.
So when he founded his own distillery in 1866, he built it around the Cave Spring. And he built it around the charcoal vat.
We still do it that way today. And we still do it the hard way.
We don't buy our charcoal. We make it ourselves. If you’re ever in Lynchburg, you’ll see it—and you’ll smell it. We call it "ricking."
We buy prime, hard sugar maple wood. We stack it into "ricks," or large, carefully built piles, some as high as six feet. Then, we douse them—not with gasoline, but with 140-proof, un-matured whiskey. We light the match.
It's a controlled burn. The men who run the ricks, our "charcoal men," are masters of their trade. They’re not trying to create ash. They're trying to create charcoal. They let it burn for just the right amount of time, a spectacle of fire and smoke, before dousing it with water. The result is pure, black, sugar maple charcoal.
This isn’t just for show. It’s a vital, expensive, and time-consuming part of our process that we do before our process even begins.
After it cools, we grind that charcoal down into fine, uniform pieces—nothing bigger than a bean. And then we pack it, by hand, into the ten-foot-tall mellowing vats. We stamp it down, layer by layer, until it's packed just right. Not too tight, not too loose.
It’s a craft all its own. And it’s a craft that’s been passed down for generations.
Why go through all the trouble? Why spend all that time and money on making our own charcoal just to let our whiskey trickle through it for days?
Because that's what Mr. Jack did. Because that's what Nathan Green taught him. And because that's what makes our whiskey taste the way it does.
It's that extra step, that separates us. It means our whiskey goes into the barrel already smooth. It doesn't have to fight the wood; it gets to work with it. That charcoal-mellowed smoothness allows the barrel—the char, the vanilla, the caramel notes—to add complexity and character, rather than just covering up a harsh spirit.
It’s the most important step in our entire Distillery, and it’s the one we will never, ever skip.
So when you see "Tennessee Whiskey" on our label, know that it’s more than just a name. It’s a process. It’s a promise. It’s a nod to Mr. Jack and to Nathan Green.
It's a testament to the fact that "Every day we make it, we'll make it the best we can." And for us, the best way is the hard way.
Mr. Jack would have had it no other way. And neither will we.
Targeting Cookies are required to view this content
Since 1866 Jack Daniel’s has been making friends all over the world. We'd like to invite you to become a friend of Jack too.