Square Bottle In A Round World: How Mr. Jack Made His Mark
Square Bottle In A Round World: How Mr. Jack Made His Mark
In Lynchburg, we’ve always believed that if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it your own way. It’s a lesson we learned from Mr. Jack himself. He was a man of independent spirit, a fellow who didn't mind standing out in a crowd, in fact, he preferred it.
And nothing says "standing out" quite like the bottle that sits on back bars from here to Tokyo.
But that bottle didn't just appear out of thin air. Like everything else in the Holler, it has a story. And like the best stories, it starts with a problem, a bit of stubbornness, and a decision that changed everything.
Back in the late 1800s, the whiskey business was a little different than it is today. You didn't walk into a store and pick a brand off the shelf. Most whiskey was sold by the barrel or the earthenware jug. It was a bulk business.
The trouble was, once a barrel left the distillery, you lost control of it. Saloons, grocers, and restaurants would do their own bottling with whatever glass they had on hand, sometimes mixing whiskeys or making other additions when a bottle fell short.
For a man like Jack Daniel, whose personal motto was “Every day we make it, we’ll make it the best we can,” this was a problem. He wasn't spending years charcoal mellowing his whiskey drop by drop just to have someone ruin it before it reached the glass.
It was Jack’s nephew, Lem Motlow, who saw the solution. Lem had a head for business and a keen eye for the future, pointing out that it would make sense for Jack Daniel’s to bottle their own whiskey before they sold it. Jack agreed, after more than a bit of discussion.
But as Lem soon found out, convincing Jack to bottle the whiskey was the easy part. Getting him to pick a bottle? That was a different struggle entirely.
Mr. Jack was a particular man. He knew what he liked, and more importantly, he knew what he didn't like.
The story goes that a local glass salesman came down to Lynchburg to pitch his wares. He brought samples. Lots of them. Round bottles. Fluted bottles. Tall bottles. Short bottles. And in just about every color of glass.
He wore out his shoes walking back and forth to Jack's office, and he nearly wore out his patience, too. Jack rejected every single one. To him, they looked like everyone else's whiskey. They were common. And Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey was anything but common.
Finally, down to his last option and probably ready to give up, the salesman pulled out a bottle that was different. It wasn't round. It was square.
Jack looked at it. He held it. It was solid. It was distinct. It didn't look like the rest.
After thinking it over a minute, Jack nodded. A smile likely crept across his face as he said the words that would become part of our history:
“A square bottle for a square shooter.”
In 1895, the decision was made. Jack Daniel’s began flowing into those distinctive square bottles, and it hasn't stopped since.
The square bottle was a novelty, but then crafting a whiskey loved around the globe in a small town in Tennessee might seem a bit unusual too. That’s fine with us, because like Jack, we believe that doing things the best way we know how, even if that takes a bit longer, and even if it looks a little different, is the only way to be. That sometimes means you’re a ‘square bottle in a round world.’
But since Jack valued ‘independent spirits’ in whiskey, and in his friends, we know he’d approve.
Seit 1866 hat Jack Daniel's Freunde auf der ganzen Welt. Wir möchten dich einladen, auch ein Freund von Jack zu werden.