Around the Barrel - Transcript: Ep041 Jed Lirette
Jed Lirette: Some of those people who have been here before, who bring newcomers to the distillery, they're so excited about the story that they think you're about to tell that they preempt you telling them. It's like, "Ooh, I was about to get to that. That was my crescendo, ma'am. Yeah. I was going to finish big with that safe story, but go ahead and finish now."
Lucas Hendrickson: Don't let the aphorisms fool you; you can come home again. Yes. Sometimes it takes venturing out into the world to appreciate what's available to you a little closer to home, but that experience can be invaluable when your newfound role at home involves making others from across the globe feel at home in your home.
On this episode, we talk with Jed Lirette, senior brand ambassador and tour guide at the Jack Daniel Distillery about seeing such a familiar piece of home out in the world, about the world slowly opening back up after the struggles of the past year plus, and about how it takes every kind of taste bud to ensure the quality of what comes out of Lynchburg from Around the Barrel.
Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniels. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. Take one glance at Jed Lirette, and the first descriptor that might come to mind is no nonsense, solid build, shaved head, carefully crafted beard that says, "I know my way around both grooming items and power tools." It's a look that fairly shouts, "Do not mess with this man."
But then you actually meet him, and you realize there might not be a more gregarious person on the planet. Jed is a Louisiana native who moved to middle Tennessee with his family at a young age, and now combines the familiarity of home with an attention to detail and a gift for gab that makes him the perfect combination to tell the story of the Jack Daniel Distillery to thousands of guests per year. And while the past year has presented challenges none of us could have predicted, it's the pride in what so many people continue to accomplish in Lynchburg that keeps Jed energized about conveying that ongoing story every single day.
Jed: My name's Jed Lirette. I'm the senior brand ambassador for Jack Daniel's Distillery. Born in Houma, Louisiana. I live in Petersburg, Tennessee, and it's good to be here with y'all today.
Lucas: Jed Lirette. Welcome to Around the Barrel.
Jed: Thank you. Thank you.
Lucas: It's good to see you. You certainly have an interesting path to, then from, then back to Lynchburg as part of your overall story. Tell us a little bit about what brought you from Louisiana originally, then here to Lynchburg growing up.
Jed: It was the oiling industry in 1984.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: My dad was in the oil field. He was a welder out there. We came to visit some family up here in 1984, just for a vacation. And the family fell in love with it. Seven months after visiting family here in Lynchburg, we moved to Lynchburg. A matter of fact, we lived in a small little house about four miles north of where we're at right now on the distillery grounds.
Lucas: Oh, wow.
Jed: Yeah. Went to elementary school here, and grew up some of my early life here. Graduated high school just about 13 miles south of here in Fayetteville. Yeah.
Lucas: Gotcha. And then you started off on your international adventures and stuff. What drew you to the Navy, and then as an IT professional? Talk about the merging of those two worlds.
Jed: Sure.
Lucas: It seems a little disconnected-
Jed: Disconnected. Yeah.
Lucas: ... and also very of a thing.
Jed: I got to tell you that after I got out of high school, very little direction, had really no idea what I was doing. So I started working at a factory. All right?
Lucas: Okay.
Jed: And I knew that's not where I needed to be. And so just, I guess out of desperation, needed to do something, needed some direction so I joined the US Navy. My wife and I had already been married at that point, and we moved to San Diego. She said it was the best four-and-a-half year vacation she ever had.
Lucas: Mainly because the weather was always 85 degrees and clear.
Jed: Yeah. Yeah. And the marine layer was going to burn off at some point.
Lucas: Right. Sure. Yeah.
Jed: Yeah. So, no, it was really nice. Spent five years in the Navy. It was a beautiful experience. I worked on Coronado Island. And after getting out of the Navy, I joined up with the Department of Defense, and I worked as a senior network engineer as a deployable unit.
Lucas: Gotcha.
Jed: I went to Afghanistan for three deployments, even though, while I was in the Navy, never stepped foot on a ship for five years. After my last deployment, my wife and I had bought some vacation land in Petersburg, Tennessee. That's where we live now. And out of necessity, my mom got sick, and we moved back home, and I, again, needed a job. And so I started temping at Jack and just waiting for something that I was trained to do to open up. And it never happened. And I got full-time at Jack, and this, believe it or not, it's my favorite thing I've ever done in my entire life.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: I mean, it's Willy Wonka's chocolate factory for adults. I mean, it's outstanding.
Lucas: I've found that to be the case. Yeah. The stereotype for IT folks can be kind of that. Not very talkative. They'd rather deal with machines than people.
Jed: Absolutely.
Lucas: But your primary role here these days is kind of as a tour guide and being in front of people and-
Jed: Run my mouth.
Lucas: ... talking a lot. Yeah. When did you discover your gift of gab specifically in this kind of role?
Jed: I'll let you hear a story from my previous boss who came to visit me. After I left St. Louis, and that's where we moved back from, I started working here. My boss came down. He came to visit, took a tour, and he looked at me, and he said, "Jed, this is what you were meant to do because you ran your mouth way too much when you should have been working." And so I think I've always enjoyed talking.
Lucas: Right.
Jed: Good Southern boy. Not meeting a stranger. Everybody's your friend at first until you can prove me otherwise. And no, I love it. And since I've traveled all over the world, meeting people here, it's almost like I was back there again. I've landed all over the planet, and it's fun seeing those people come from other parts of the country or other parts of the world to visit us here in Lynchburg, Tennessee. It was like, "Yeah, I know that pub," or, "I know that location." So it's really neat. It's fun. And you're right. I can't shut up.
Lucas: So shape for us what your role is these days? We mentioned tour guide, but also brand ambassador. What does that entail on a day-to-day basis here these days?
Jed: Well, right now because of COVID and how that's restricted us, it's pretty much just tours. Most of the travel for festivals or events or onsite barrel selections or what have you, that's all been canceled right now, but you know, we're fingers crossed, hoping everything breaks soon. But as my role, when we have people of certain importance show up to the property, I get the distinct pleasure of walking them around. Barrel selections on property, sometimes I get pulled for that, but it is just a joy to be able to walk anybody around because this is our home. It's like inviting somebody into your house. You just want to let them relax for a second and show them around, have a good time. So what I do is a little more. I get to do stuff like this-
Lucas: Right.
Jed: ... where our beginning tour guides just won't have the ability, not just yet. Maybe some point in the future. But I get these sorts of things. This is fun.
Lucas: Sure. What, in this moment, and again, the world is starting to open back up a little bit slowly but slowly. That's a good thing. What about the tours have changed since you started, leading up to where we hit last year, and now how the pivots have happened over the past year? What's new and different? And then what has changed in the midst of all that new and different?
Jed: Well, before COVID hit, we were breaking all previous records.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: I mean, people were coming in droves, which was a blessing.
Lucas: Right.
Jed: Well, I mean, it was really nice to have that influx of folks in because they're passionate about the brand, they're fans of the brand. March 13th of last year, it stops. And everybody's aware of that. We opened the front door, the visitor center, June 1st. And all we were able to offer was just a tour of the visitor center building. A bunch of us stood around, showed them the displays, try to talk to them as best we could, but through the actual process, and I know for a guest who hasn't been here before, it was probably more than they were able-
Lucas: Had been expecting.
Jed: Yeah, absolutely. But we knew that it wasn't as much as we could give. And so as soon as we could, we opened up the tour path as much as we could. Production buildings were off limits. We weren't allowed to go in there. And as this thing's progressed, we've opened up more buildings, more opportunities to see stuff. We're back in mellowing, which is my favorite spot-
Lucas: Oh sure.
Jed: ... because you get 140 proof Jack in your face.
Lucas: Wafted right in off those charcoal vats.
Jed: That's right.
Lucas: Yeah, absolutely.
Jed: And we went from small groups of 10 to now we're groups of 20. And that's happened within the last month. So things are starting to loosen up in a responsible way.
Lucas: Right.
Jed: All right. We're trying to be mindful of people who visit because our working force and the guests's experience, they coincide because this is not faked. We're making every drop of Jack here. So we want to protect them. We want to protect our workers because they want to still be able to drink their whiskey, and we can't shut down.
Lucas: No.
Jed: And so, yeah, it's grown. It's progressed, and it's gotten better over the last year period. And we're hopeful that it's just going to get better. There's things coming up in the future, though. So yeah, all the listeners, you need to be looking at on our website because there's new tour possibilities that are coming up. We do have a walkup tasting now.
Lucas: Oh. Right on.
Jed: Yeah. So I think it's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If, say for instance, you've been here before, or maybe the tasting tours are sold out, you can go up to the counter. You'll get a ticket for a tasting. You go to the Lynchburg room, and you select four samples out of all of our catalog. And so it's a pretty neat, not quite a bar experience, but the person pouring talks you through what that whiskey is. And so it's a little more than just a, "Here's your whiskey. Drink it and leave." It's definitely an education about that brand you picked.
Lucas: Well, I was going to say, for every company involved in the kind of the hospitality space right now, it's been an opportunity while you've been shut down or slowed down or whatever, to kind of refine and rework the things that you were doing in the past, hopefully, and identifying those things that have worked best and amplifying those, so that as, again, the world continues to open back up, the best distillation, for lack of a better pun, of all that is what's shown the public that is working really hard, especially in the case of Lynchburg, Tennessee, to get here. You don't get here on accident. What kind of things have you seen in the midst of that new walkup tasting idea? That's brand new, but you have to have people in place for that, that have specific brand knowledge of those whiskeys that they're pouring for folks. It's a learning experience for everybody involved, it sounds like.
Jed: Yeah. Our pivot was interesting because we had the personnel that we had, and now we need to work with the personnel that we have. Look, Jack Daniel's been offering a tour of some type for over 50 years.
Lucas: Right.
Jed: That being said, sometimes it's good to pause for a second and reassess how things are being done, which we've taken this time, and we've been mindful of that. How can we make the experience better? Because you can get the blinders on. Everything's just moving along just fine.
Lucas: If it ain't broke, don't break it kind of thing.
Jed: Yeah, exactly. But this has given us an opportunity to think, to innovate. And so just as one example, that walkup tasting was that opportunity to say, "Our guests may be limited on time. They may have taken a tour or maybe they have a kid with them that...We don't allow children on the tour, but we will allow you to take in the confines of that room, your child, so that they can sit at this table, and you can go and talk about whiskey. And so that's been great for the experience as a whole. Yeah, no. It's really cool.
Lucas: Yeah. We've asked a lot of people who are here, boots on the ground every day, about what their favorite part of the public facing side of the distillery is. We've gotten a lot of responses about the cave spring and the safe and all that stuff. Give us something really obscure, though, that people can look for if they are coming to take a tour, either with you or the great staff that's doing this stuff, that's kind of out of the ordinary.
Jed: Like an Easter egg on the tour?
Lucas: Yeah, exactly. An Easter egg on that kind of thing.
Jed: We had an old tour path. And the first thing that popped into my head is we had an old tour path that circled around the top of the Rickyard.
Lucas: Okay.
Jed: There's a vantage point up there that you can look down on to the Rickyard from that spot. And if you look, when you're standing at the Rickyard, the hoods are going to be on your left, and if you look towards the limestone wall, all right, look at the top of the wall, you'll see black hand rails all the way around the top. And sometimes they're covered with bushes or whatever, but that is the old hand rail where you could stand, and it was like a vista viewpoint. And that was an old hiking trail or tour trail a long time ago. So not many people notice that anymore because it's all grown up, but you can still see that hand rail up there.
And plus, as you walk down towards the firetrucks in Jack's office, if you look up on the hillside, you'll see hand rails up there, as well. And so it was almost like you walked above the distillery and looked down on it, which is, be honest with you, it's pretty cool. I mean, nobody gets that view anymore. And so yeah, if you're looking for an Easter egg, that would be a good Easter egg.
Lucas: And also proof that the tours used to be a little bit more of a hike than they currently are.
Jed: Yeah. Yeah. We didn't bus you around. No. We have some old folks, they show up every so often, and they're like, "We didn't get on a bus the last time I was here." And I was like, "50 years ago?"
Lucas: Right. Going back to your time, first in the Navy, than the DOD, and you were in various places around the world, what was it like for you to see Jack Daniels out in the places where it was legally available in some of the places that you were stationed?
Jed: Sure.
Lucas: Was that always a little bit of an extra tie to home for you when you were across the world?
Jed: It was a reminder. Look, before I moved from here and started my career in the Navy and then Department of Defense, I'd never thought I would leave. And then once I left, I never thought I would come back. I mean, it's like, you've got your life progressing in a certain way. You never see it changing. And I hate to say, "I don't think I'll ever leave," now because I don't want to jinx it. Right? But I don't think I'm going anywhere, to be honest with you, but when I was in the UK or Germany and seeing those, and places like Dubai, as well, when I landed there, it was behind the bar. And it did remind me. I wasn't thinking in the mindset like, "Ooh, I'm going to be an ambassador for Jack Daniel's one day." But I remember looking at that bottle and going, "I took my first tour in the fourth grade at Lynchburg with the Lynchburg Elementary School class."
Lucas: Right.
Jed: All right. Here at Jack Daniel's. Where most people go to petting zoos, I went to a distillery, and it wasn't about whiskey back then, but that's what it reminded me of when I saw the bottle and asked for my Jack and Coke or whatever it was, it reminded me of home. Yeah. It did.
Lucas: Sure. What do you think it says about the distillery and the company itself and about the brand in general, that it is so supportive of the military? It has been, not only throughout its history, but also currently with the things with the Armed Services YMCA and obviously, Operation Ride Home towards the end of the year. Well actually, a year-round operation, that is. As a former member of the military, what does that do for you to know that the company that you've worked for for a while continues to support the work of the folks that you worked with for 15 years or so?
Jed: It's pride. I'm so proud of Jack Daniel's for stepping up for those. When you're talking about the Operation Ride Home with the YMCA, and I was a young service member. And we were scratching money together just to go home for Christmas. I understand what that's like, and some of these families don't have an opportunity. So it's a point of pride when I know that Jack Daniel's being a global brand really doesn't have to, but they get to. And so it's a huge point of pride for me when I get to talk about that, especially on things like Veteran's Day and around Christmas, where we're doing those things for the families. Knowing what they're going through, it makes me feel good that now I'm a part of Jack Daniel's, where we get to sponsor those families. It is a huge point of pride for me.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: Yeah. I love it. It's great.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: Yeah.
Lucas: So who is, besides Mr. Jack, of course, because his legend is huge in all this, but who is your favorite character in the legend and lore, past, present, future, of this distillery?
Jed: The first people, if I can use two.
Lucas: Oh, sure.
Jed: Because they move in tandem.
Lucas: Right.
Jed: All right?
Lucas: Yeah.
Jed: And that's Goose and Randall. I mean, if you're wanting an amazing story of two men working so long being so committed to a brand and a family, and they're the funniest two guys with the best stories. Now whether or not they're true?
Lucas: Too much of that lost to history.
Jed: That's right. But those two men have committed so much to this brand, and-
Lucas: I thought you were going to say committed something else. But, yeah.
Jed: Well, again, you'd have to check with them.
Lucas: They committed themselves.
Jed: Is it past the statute of limitations for some of this? But no, absolutely. Goose and Randall. I mean, presently still here, still influencing the fans of Jack Daniel's for the whiskey itself. Yeah. Plus I think they're great.
Lucas: Yeah.
Jed: I wanted to say something else, but no, I think they're great.
Lucas: And thankfully, one of them already had a nickname because they're both named Randy, so-
Jed: Yeah. Yeah. We couldn't do that.
Lucas: Yeah. That would be, that'd be very, very confusing.
Jed: I'm Randy. This is my other brother, Randy.
Lucas: Then it becomes an episode of Newhart, and we're back in the '80s again.
Jed: I know. Right?
Lucas: You know, it would be apropos for those guys.
Jed: No.
Lucas: That's awesome. Along that same line, obviously you get asked tons of questions about process and stuff as part of the tour situation. But do you have a favorite thing that just makes you chuckle when you get the opportunity to recount it? Not that it's something that you say on every tour.
Jed: No. To be honest with you, the most interesting thing was the time when Mr. Jimmy Bedford left his position, and Jeff took on that position as master distiller, there was a day where we had no master distiller.
Lucas: Oh, no.
Jed: Yeah. April 1st. Jeff did not want to take his position on April Fool's Day.
Lucas: Yeah. Yeah. Nobody would believe him at that point.
Jed: And so he decided to take his position April 2nd. So yes, Jack Daniels was unmanned for one full day, April 1st.
Lucas: Oh no. What year was that? When did he-
Jed: 2008.
Lucas: 2008? Okay. So April 1st, just chaos reigned.
Jed: No, I mean, look. It was bedlam here, man. It was crazy. Things were running. People's hair was on fire.
Lucas: Right? Exactly. Didn't know what to do.
Jed: No.
Lucas: How did you become involved in the quality-control, whiskey tasting side of the thing? Because that's part of your gig, as well. Friday mornings, you head to the lab and lend your talents to that process. How did you get involved with that?
Jed: That was a test I was willing to fail multiple times.
Lucas: Sure. Of course.
Jed: It's like, "Jed, would you like to drink whiskey on Fridays?" "Sure. Yeah. Let's see if this works." Because of my position and how I need to be able to taste and smell whiskey, they needed to verify if I'm tasting or smelling correctly. There was a position. These things don't come open very often. And so they asked me to come down to the lab, and apparently, I passed. So we haven't been able to go into the lab here recently because of the whole smelling out of the same containers or tasting and stuff like that. But we're looking forward to it again. But yeah, sipping Old No. 7, Gentleman Jack. My profile is not the master tasting profile, which is going to be more of your single barrel whiskey select barrel proof rye. I'm doing more of our family of brands, like the liquors, Old No. 7.
Lucas: Gotcha.
Jed: But I'm perfectly fine with the taste of free whiskey.
Lucas: And the joke that can come out of that is how did you become good at that? Repetition.
Jed: Repetition, yeah.
Lucas: But I mean, what were the things that you did purposefully to build your own kind of sense of what's good and what's off? Because I got to imagine every once in a while, they'll throw you a curve ball, or you just have to say, "This isn't quite what it's supposed to be."
Jed: That's that's not left up to chance. When you're going into the lab, they're hiding stuff. They'll put things in. A lot of it's just sensory testing.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: So yes, we taste on Friday, but Monday through Thursday, we're actually smelling whiskey when we go into the lab. And so what they'll do is they'll add something to the whiskey and see if you pick it up. It'll be the smallest little bit of something.
Lucas: Right.
Jed: And so they're just checking your markers, seeing if you're hitting those points. But I was on a tour with Jeff Arnett, and he was walking with me and some people around, and he had commented that I was a taster.
Lucas: Okay.
Jed: Like, "Yeah, but you're the master distillerer." But the people asked, "Well, what kind of tastes buds do you have?" And Jeff said something I never considered. He said, "Jed has the perfect taste buds for what he does. We need the every man's kind of smell and taste," because Old No. 7, it's going to be your vanillas, your caramels, your oats, right, in your every man kind of drink. He said, "We don't need somebody doing Old No. 7 that picks up cinnamon all the time or these weird off flavors in their heightened senses, and so Jed's are normal guy situation."
Lucas: You need a baseline.
Jed: You need a baseline, and Jed is the lowest common denominator.
Lucas: That's not true. But, but yeah, there are some ways in which super tasters are a fantastic thing, but again, to establish that baseline and also know-
Jed: Your Average Joe.
Lucas: You've got to have all those folks, as well, and you're willing to throw yourself onto that sword.
Jed: I'll sacrifice, I'll carry the cross.
Lucas: So is there anything that you do on Thursday nights or early Friday mornings, again, when the world was a little more normal, rituals that you would do to lead up to that to make sure that-
Jed: No coffee.
Lucas: No coffee. Okay.
Jed: No coffee. No breakfast, and brush my teeth before I leave the house. And then it's a 30 minute drive in any way, so it's a clean palette. It's all I do. It's a clean palette before I go in. Got one of those cool tongue things that scrapes your tongue. I don't know if y'all have one of those. Those are awesome. Awesome invention.
Lucas: Don't have one, but probably worth looking into.
Jed: Yeah.
Lucas: Especially again, as we'll start to not have to wear masks as often. And-
Jed: One of the other tour guides said that before wearing masks, nobody ever questioned eating a tuna sandwich for lunch, and now wearing masks everybody's considering their options for lunch.
Lucas: Yes. So how many tours do you venture you've done over the years?
Jed: Oh my goodness. Been here six years. I can do the math real quick, and it's going to be rough math. I don't hold a candle to some of our elder statesmen who have been here for a long time, but it isn't, I've never figured this out. Let me take a look. So if I do four tours, roughly, a day times, I don't know. What do we got here? 84 a month times 12 months is about 7,000 tours. Before COVID hit, we were right around 30 people per tour.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: So I haven't really talked to a lot of people. I'm kind of a shut-in.
Lucas: Yeah. Clearly.
Jed: Look, for us, we're a lot of A personalities working in the visitor center. You need people who aren't shy, but the truth is every tour we take out there's variables that we have to deal with. Right? And every tour has to be unique in some way. And so like if you're, I call them a repeat offender, you come back again and again, and again, they do want to hear about those Easter eggs. They want to hear about stuff they haven't heard before. And they may not have been on my tour for the last 20 times they've been here. And so I always try to give more every single tour, which is sometimes difficult. Yeah.
Lucas: Well I also have to imagine that some of those people are also bringing others who haven't been on the tour and I haven't been on, and they have a favorite part of the story that they want to hear and see the reaction from those folks, as well. So you've got to craft it in such a way that you're giving them all the highlights that they can react off of, as well, but also keep it interesting for yourself to do 7,000 times.
Jed: Yeah. And some of those people who have been here before, who bring newcomers to the distillery, they're so excited about the story that they think you're about to tell that they preempt you telling them. And so it's like, "Ooh, I was about to get to that."
Lucas: "And so, no spoilers, please."
Jed: Yeah. Please. "That was my crescendo, ma'am." Yeah. "I was going to finish big with that safe story, but go ahead and finish now."
Lucas: Yeah, exactly. "Jump ahead of the punchline now, thank you."
Jed: But you're both frustrated that you wanted to tell the story. At the same time, you're so excited that that guest is so excited.
Lucas: Exactly.
Jed: And so, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting and a little frustrating, but it's absolutely something that we do. And we try to not make it repetitive.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: You're not talking off of a script. You're giving a true story about a true man at a true period of time. And so you're trying to give that story and and build as much of a mental visual of what they should be seeing. Because a lot of people aren't aware that when Jack was running whiskey in the cave and using that old office, there wasn't really much down the holler.
Lucas: No, it's not like there was a visitor center up the road.
Jed: No.
Lucas: No, that was it.
Jed: The still house wasn't there. The still house was in the cave. And so it was a lot of woodland and open pasture, and he came down the holler road. It was not what you see right now. And it's sometimes difficult to get people to wrap their head around the idea that he was back here on the backside of his property running whiskey, and none of this other stuff, none of the other buildings you see even existed at that time. And so it's fun and kind of difficult or challenging. Not difficult, but challenging.
Lucas: Sure. We've mentioned favorite character, favorite trivia. Do you have a favorite part of the tour story that you look forward to getting to each time?
Jed: Yeah. And it's changed over the years, meaning that my favorite part has morphed over the years. So I had always, when I first started working here, always given all the credit to Mr. Dan Call and Mr. Nathan "Nearest" Green for their contribution of training Jack to make whiskey. As it's progressed, I had a great aunt that bottled whiskey here, back in the fifties, sixties and seventies. And so it's become that story plus all the families who still work here. We have four Greens, Miss Debbie, Miss Jackie, their brother, Jerome, and their cousin, Chris. They work here at the distillery itself, and it's morphed to now we have Chris Fletcher, our master distiller and his grandfather, Frank Bobo, and myself. We have people in the visitor center who are three generations of workers.
So it's more from that great story of one family, the Green family, being here for 150 years plus, to all these other generations that have committed their families to the making of Jack Daniel's Whiskey and what it is. That's my favorite story because it becomes real because it's not somewhere with some people making it. It's real families that have committed generations to a brand.
Lucas: Sure.
Jed: That needs to be an advertisement or something. No, I'm kidding.
Lucas: You might know somebody who knows somebody that can get that hooked up for you there. So I've said this many times, going to continue to say it...As the world continues to open up, what's the best way for people to see what's available tour wise? Give us the website spiel and all that stuff for people who are ready to make the trek and take a walk around this place.
Jed: I will tell you that since we've been opening up more and more, and the distillery tour path has been progressively getting more to normal, and the tour sizes have been getting more than normal, the best way you can get a tour is to book online.
Lucas: Right.
Jed: The problem is is that they go quick. All right, because we're limiting the tour size to 20 people now, they're going really quick. Hopefully we'll open up to full capacity as far as the tours and we're adding in tours daily just to keep up with the demand, but online is going to be your best bet. And plan ahead. If you know you're coming to Jack Daniels next month, yeah, go ahead and look online. See if that tours available. Give us a call. The website is jackdaniels.com, and we have our visitor center number on that website.
Lucas: Read through all the stuff that's on there because it's there for your edification.
Jed: Absolutely. Yeah.
Lucas: But yeah, that's fantastic.
Jed: Click the drop down.
Lucas: Yeah. Click. Read it all. That's why it's there. Well Jed, again thank you for your time. Thank you for your service-
Jed: Oh well, thank you.
Lucas: ... prior to being here and look forward to talking to you again about your ongoing adventures here.
Jed: Oh, it's going to be fun. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Lucas: Thanks for joining us at Around the Barrel.
Thanks for checking out this episode of Around the Barrel. If you want to get a sense of the kind of stories told on a Jack Daniel's tour, head back into the archives for episode one, season one, and a chat with tour guide, Ben Spears.
And if you want to know more about the distillery's efforts with the Armed Services YMCA and Operation Ride Home, check out episode 10 of season two with Admiral Bill French. You can find archived episodes of Around the Barrel on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and more, plus on the web at jackdaniels.com/podcast. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe, 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 Daniels and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2021, 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.
