Around the Barrel - Transcript: Ep042 JD Aged

 

Chris Fletcher: You know, if you think about Mr. Jack and the life he lived and wearing the top hat, the bow tie, the overcoat every day, he was absolutely someone that appreciated pushing things a little further and kind of having this, a little bit of, I guess, an elevated experience of his whiskey, just the way that he lived his life.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Patience is not only a virtue in the whiskey world; it's pretty much a requirement. It's always taken a fair amount of time to craft a product like Old No.7 Tennessee Whiskey. It also takes a lot of experience, talent, and yes, patience to see where there's an opportunity to spend a little bit more time and see what kind of excellence can emerge from those toasted white oak vessels. 

 

On this episode, we talk with Jack Daniel's master distiller, Chris Fletcher about a brand new yet old school offering from the distillery, about how teamwork makes an unexpected move so much easier, and about how honoring the legacy of Mr. Jack sometimes requires one to just hurry up and wait 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. Let's get this out of the way upfront. This is a little different episode of Around The Barrel. Most of the time, we're doing deep dives into the history and impact of Jack Daniel's Old No.7 Tennessee Whiskey with the people spending their days bringing that spirit into the world. This time, we're dealing with something brand new and yet with plenty of history behind it. In this case, at least a decade's worth. Today, the company is announcing the release of Jack Daniel's 10 year old Tennessee Whiskey, the brand's first 10 year aged dated whiskey in more than a hundred years. We talked with master distiller Chris Fletcher about the origins of this limited availability project, which celebrates the modern whiskey making and maturing expertise of the distillery while simultaneously paying tribute to the brand's past.

 

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

 

Lucas: Chris Fletcher, welcome back to Around The Barrel.

 

Chris: Thanks. Good to be here.

 

Lucas: Good to see you. Let's set the scene a little bit. We are sitting in the Motlow House, the primary destination for the Tennessee Squires Association members here on the outskirts of the grounds here at Jack Daniel's, here in Lynchburg. It's a fun little place to kind of look at not only the present, but also the past. And in the case of what we're going to talk about, the future of a past product here. So just to kind of lay it out there to start with, we are talking about a brand new product coming down the pipe from Jack Daniel's. Just give us the quick elevator pitch on what people are going to be able to get their hands on here very, very shortly.

 

Chris: Yeah, we're super excited to, as you alluded to, recreate some of our past here. And we have a 10 year old aged dated Tennessee Whiskey coming down the line. It's 97 proof and really, really is a beautiful, beautiful whiskey. The team has done a great job in making sure that we put out the best 10 year old whiskey that we possibly could. We've kind of looked at it from all angles, followed it, tracked it, tasted it, made sure everybody felt really good about it. And it's really, really a beautiful whiskey and I cannot wait for people to get their hands on it.

 

Lucas: Yeah, I know a lot of people are going to be really excited when they find out about it in general and then obviously they get their hands on it moving forward. When and how did this first kind of get identified as a product and a project that you wanted to kind of bring forward? I mean, again, most people probably think if they know about the creation of Old No.7 and how it is mingled and matured, that kind of stuff, but this is taking that idea one step further and yet also reaching back into the past on this kind of idea. Tell us about the origins on it?

 

Chris: Absolutely. Well, I'm a firm believer that our past can lead us to great things here. If you look at the history of the distillery, I mean heck, we didn't even only make whiskeys back post-prohibition, we were doing brandies and things like that. And there are no plans for that in Lynchburg per se, but however, where I was going is there's a diversity of products that came out of the Jack Daniel Distillery, even as far back as when Jack Daniel was still alive. And I have a huge affinity for our history here and a huge respect for the people that came before us here. And knowing that and looking back through what Jack Daniel had done, what the Motlow's had done, my grandfather and others, it really, it's an inspiration source for me.

 

So this old series of hopefully aged dated whiskeys to kind of recreate in kind of a tip of the cap to Mr. Jack, when he was still alive. By all indications, a 10 year old aged dated whiskey hasn't been done here since the early 1900s, so since he himself was involved. And there was a range. He had a 10 year old, a 12, 14, 18, and I've even seen some 21 year old labels out there. So I mean, it's really, really interesting when you think of that kind of a series and then in that time point of American whiskey. And so if you go back to much earlier than that, American whiskey and aging American whiskey, while it was certainly being aged and thought of in that way in the early 1900s, you go back just a generation before Jack, and pretty much American whiskey in a barrel is just a shipping container pretty much.

 

Lucas: Right, sure.

 

Chris: The aging to get a color and a flavor out of it was really not the priority for that barrel.

 

Lucas: Sure. Certainly want to know more about kind of the literal process of kind of identifying those barrels x number of years ago, but we've talked a lot when we've been together about that idea of the innovation lens, as far as the company goes, the things that you're wanting to do as new products, new expressions, new brands, new flavor profiles, things like that. But how does this recreation of a historical product fit into that idea? Is it just brand expansion or is it just kind of putting a twist, a new twist or old twist even, on a product offering, I'm fascinated on how this kind of emerged that way?

 

Chris: Yeah. Old twist on the current product, I mean this is a classic Tennessee Whiskey recipe, 80% corn, 12% malt, 8% rye. And really it came about with some thought around our single barrels and some different lots because typically those are going to be a little older. Five, six, seven, somewhere in that range. And so it was about four years ago when we started holding back a little bit of single barrel. Because the thing with single barrel, we always put up more on top floor than what we're going to use, right. So most of that top floor whiskey is still getting put in Old No.7, right. And so we're going to pull out single barrel kind of as we need it, and of course as it's approved. But typically, we put away about three times as much top floor whiskey is what we're ever going to need for single barrel.

 

And so with our brand teams and marketing people and just see if we could recreate it, I have long wanted to recreate that series of age statements because it is our history. It's part of what we do. There was no other target, no other we have to hit 10 or anything like that. It was simply, let's see if we can recreate what Jack did, period. That's something that I want to do and is actually, if I look back across our history with different things and different decanter series and different kind of interesting little nuggets of our history that could then possibly be applied to adjusting the liquid and creating a new offering or just a twist on something that we've been doing, is kind of where we went with it. And so this is kind of the first step in that direction.

 

And so we let those barrels hang out on the top floor. I think they had gotten a little older than seven, to be honest, which I can't say. I'm going to say about seven and a half was about how old they were when we went in and decided to move them, which is something we don't do a lot. With our inventory and with kind of wanting that difference for some products, for instance, we know what we've done with some single barrels and what not, you want that top floor, you want them to stay up there, but probably not for 10 years. Five, seven, eight, yeah. Could I push it or could we make it go a little farther? Yeah, depending on the house and depending on the whiskey. Sure. You could push it maybe to nine. To be quite honest, 10 scares me a bit on the top floor the whole time. For one thing, you're going to lose so much whiskey.

 

Lucas: Sure. Yeah.

 

Chris: The evaporation gets pretty brutal. And as that whiskey works its way down the barrel the surface area is exposed to more air itself. And so at that point, you're burning through it even faster due to evaporation. And so we went in, like I say, about two years ago and moved these barrels down to a bottom floor, in house 24 down on track two. They spent the first seven and a half years in house 34 on the top.

 

Lucas: Okay.

 

Chris: So literally 10 barrel houses over, we drop them all the way to the bottom.

 

Lucas: Yeah.

 

Chris: And our folks down in warehousing, they're fantastic. They knew exactly where to go with them. They had it all lined up and we'd done some sampling and things along the way to make sure, to look at yield, to look at how the flavor and the color and everything was going. And so two and a half years later that move was proved to be very fruitful because the whiskey really maintains this really beautiful sweetness upfront. And I liken it to kind of like raisins, kind of the fruit has gotten a little darker, a little richer, with kind of a nice caramelized sugar and molasses over the top of it, just such a great creamy mouthfeel and sweetness. And so it was absolutely the right thing to do. And the result is just a gorgeous, gorgeous product.

 

Lucas: Yeah. What was the process to kind of zero in then on that single barrel house? And were there other opportunities that kind of were close to that same sort of profile that you were looking for or did that barrel house 34 just really jump out and be the leader in the clubhouse kind of making those decisions?

 

Chris: It didn't. It actually kind of snuck up on us. To be honest, that's a great question, yeah. To kind of pull back the curtain, I think people sometimes give us a little too much credit. A lot of times, it's just, it's pretty simple, common sense stuff, right? This stuff is on the top floor. We're getting close to eight years. These are not the oldest barrels we have here by the way. But, so we were also looking at some barrels that were older and we were looking at another batch of barrels that was actually just a little bit younger by a few months. And so we really had those three options on the table and up until probably early part of the summer, maybe late spring, we thought we would go with maybe that batch. It was just slightly a little bit older, but we decided to switch it up and look and see, I guess if you were to go in order, we would call this the middle batch or the middle lot.

 

We really fell in love with it for the first few barrel samples that we pulled out. Because it really still has this, it's still a sweet forward whiskey. And so by spending well over seven years on the top floor, total of 10, that's not super old whiskey. 10 years is not crazy old, but in American whiskey, that is getting up there, right. So that is significant age on an American whiskey being in a new charred oak barrel and all the regulations that go around it. And then secondly, we let it rip for seven and a half years, right. I mean we were searing that thing. Think of cooking a steak. I mean, it was top floor. And then we kind of slow simmered it for the last two and a half. So it was really the best decision forward. And we had kind of considered a couple of different options on it, but we zeroed in early back in the spring. After tasting a little bit of this, we felt like that was the best way forward. And we locked in on it and here we are.

 

Lucas: Yeah. And specifically thinking about the barrels themselves, so this is 2011 when they were manufactured and brought up here, this was before the Cooperage in Alabama was up and running, correct? So what were the specific characteristics of those barrels you think that helped, or were there specific characteristics that you think helped to do that seven year long sear on that in a way that you got a product that you're really excited about putting out there?

 

Chris: Well, if we knew exactly, we could just go back in and do it again tomorrow. So that's the difficult thing is we spec every barrel the same for us with the toasting and the charring. However, I mean, if you look at our supply chain for oak, we're coming from the Carolinas, Virginias, all the way across to the Ozarks and even down in North Georgia in areas too. So a lot of oak coming out of Tennessee. So you've got this diversity that gets kind of consolidated and compiled as it works its way through the system on whether it's pushed through Kentucky, ultimately, through Louisville, our cooperage there or if it's coming out of Trinity, Alabama and our folks down there to Jack Daniel Cooperage. You're going to get this subtle variation.

 

Lucas: Of course.

 

Chris: So with single barrel, we're not mixing anything, obviously that's what you're going to get. But the other thing is, this is not a single barrel offering. We actually pulled over 200 barrels for this. The yield wasn't fantastic because it had spent been almost eight years on the top floor. And so there's not a massive amount of product out there because of where this barrels came from. But, then again, that's the downside of a great whiskey that spent eight years on top floor. It's not going to yield as much as what you would get off a bottom floor.

 

Lucas: Sure. How much was patience? Again, a key innovation point on this and just trying to identify them a couple of years ago, move them, track them, get to the kind of thing that you want to throw out there as a product. Is that a key innovation point and how much can you learn from that continuing to move forward with not only this product, but other things you might be considering for the future?

 

Chris: Absolutely. As a whiskey maker, patience is something that you have to deal with and you learn real quick in your 20 years in the industry. That's something that I pretty much accepted as just truth. And the thing is, I mean, you can't shortcut it, you can't fake it. I mean, I know there's a lot of things out there and a lot of kind of tricks and things that are being thrown out as what's able to be done with different methods and things. And look, we've been making whiskey 150 years, been making barrels since World War II basically as a company, so if it's been done with a barrel, we've done it. We've probably done it 10 different ways. Big barrels, little barrels, deep grooves in barrels, inside out barrels. I mean, we've done some crazy stuff. We didn't market it back when we were doing that in 1965 or whenever it was just because nobody had thought to do that. Of course, it was a lot different time in American whiskey as well.

 

Lucas: A lot different market.

 

Chris: Yeah. But getting back to taking your time and patience, there's a lot of things that in our history and the things that we could go back and draw this inspiration on, but it is going to take time. Because at the end of the day, we've got to keep our focus on Old No.7, Gentleman Jack, our great rye whiskey, single barrel offerings. All that is still going and operating and so when you have these innovation platforms that we have, which is a priority for the company now. I know people love to try new and different flavors coming out of the distillery. And being able to sit down and sip on the single barrel grain bill at this age and at this proof, people are just going to love it.

 

I mean you could see kind of the following we've gotten with our single barrel, barrel proof. At its heart, that's Old No.7. That is absolutely the DNA of that whiskey, is Old No.7. Old No.7 is just going to be more of a composite batch from across floors. And then of course, we're just going to be proofed down to 80 for No.7. But at its core, you have that classic Jack Daniel's grain bill in there, that same barrel, the same charcoal mellowing. So it's really, really interesting what we can do even with a grain bill that's been around we know at least since prohibition.

 

Lucas: Sure.

 

Chris: If you sit back and you think about, we've got rye whiskey now, we will look at other things on the grain side. We will look at other things with the cooperage side. Where are we sourcing wood? What types, different types of inserts, different types of even barrels in some cases? We're going to do it all. We're going to continue to build an inventory here with the complexity that should lead in American whiskey. I'm not going to shy away from that a bit because when you have a capability here in our supply chain, you've got such a great team of people here making our whiskey from every truck of grain that's coming in and our folks in the distillery are grinding that, and mashing, fermenting, distilling, charcoal mellowing, making our own charcoal, making our own barrels for aging, you'd be silly not to push and see what we can do.

 

Not only is it going to give our friends an opportunity to taste more unique things and different things, which is just fun at the end of the day. Secondly, it allows us to tell our story through a different lens, which I guess is kind of what we're doing here in a lot of ways, but to be able to talk about these different things that we've offered through the 10 year old and hopefully future aged dated whiskeys that are going to be amazing. Our single barrel special releases, which have just blown up and just become these kind of cult whiskeys that people are camping out for and trying to get their hands on.

 

Lucas: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the liquid itself. You mentioned a little bit about the kind of the notes that you're kind of detecting as part of that. Coming into the 97 proof, what was the kind of decision-making behind that? And then again, kind of continue to unpack what people should and hopefully will be able to taste when they get their hands on it here very shortly?

 

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Well, 97 proof, it's going to just kick it up a little bit from a typical single barrel form. So if you think about the single barrel, that's kind of a jumping off point, top floor only, 94 proof, where this has spent the majority of its life on the top floor as well. Just a little higher in proof. I mean, really just to give it a little more weight, just a little heavier on the tongue. But the beautiful thing about this whiskey is, I think it's the entry, it's the sweetness of it. It just rolls through with this sweet molasses note. And then the oak builds a bit in the finish.

 

You get some sweet tobacco notes on the back end, just a little bit of spice, but it is incredible with kind of how, to me, the entry and the mouthfeel is with this whiskey. We're also looking towards the future too. We want to go and look at what Jack did in the 12 year old. What would it look like? What would he have done? We don't know exactly, but I do know that we can take the time and do it in a way that we think is best. And so proof will be a part of that. If we need to move barrels, we'll move barrels. We've already done it, moved a lot of barrels around. So it's work, it's a lot of work on our warehousing crews and those guys are in there, hot. This is not something that you love to do when you put a barrel away for eight years and then let's go move it and then, you know.

 

Lucas: We'll see what comes out of that from there. But again, it sounds like these other little projects, I'm not trying to discount them at all, because they're fascinating, sounds like it just kind of juices up the team, gets your creative juices flowing to also then redirect some of those learnings back onto what you do with Old No.7.

 

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think everybody enjoys a bit of a challenge right, first of all. And when we started holding back some single barrels just to, look, just to make a conscious decision of look, let's start to push it and just see. Let's just see where it goes. And it just hung out for a few years. And to be honest, I quickly drew the circle around the old age statements that we've had, and I had to do a little bit of work on that. I mean, I knew of a few of them. I don't think I knew all the way up in that scale. And here's the other thing I want to make perfectly clear, this is no guarantee that we're going to have exactly the same thing every time.

 

Lucas: Sure. Of course, not.

 

Chris: I would love for that to happen. That would be kind of the ultimate I think replication of our history and such a nod to what Jack did, to honor him in that way. But if it's not right, if the whiskey is not right, we'll do other things with it. And we'll make sure that if we've reached a point where enough is enough, that's where we'll be, but I'm really optimistic. And based on what we've seen at 10 years, I think we've got a nice runway ahead of us. I think that the whiskey is going to be able to hold several more years. We will be conscious, like I say, of where those barrels are at. And that they have been moved down and kind of going low and slow from this point on. I mean, we're pretty darn good at Old No.7, right?

 

Lucas: Yeah, I think so.

 

Chris: I mean we've got that down, 150 years and number one whiskey. So we're not going to change the flavor of Old No.7. However, it doesn't mean that we can't start pushing some things in some different directions.

 

Lucas: Yeah. I happened to be here when some of that was being bottled about a week ago as we're speaking. And it comes in a beautiful decanter. I think it's a 750 size on that. Talk about the decisions on the literal bottle. Is it the same decanter as the single barrel stuff? Did they do a little bit of innovation on that as well?

 

Chris: Yeah, it's a little different. So it is a bottle that we have history with. That was the old 1915 Gold Medal bottle. And we have used it, I think most recently for the 150th, I believe that was the most recent. So it has a beautiful cork finish. We have classic black and white filigree label, although it's mostly a matte black with the filigree, and a little bit of black that will pop off of that matte.

 

Lucas: Yeah, it looks fantastic.

 

Chris: It is amazing. We have a hand drawn gold foil cartouche that then pops right in the center. And if you get your Googler out as a good friend of mine likes to say, and you look at some of our old 10 year, 12 years so on aged dated whiskeys of Jack Daniel's, the old cartouche that's in the center there, it was kind of a little bigger, just a thicker font and just a little bit different. And so they didn't perfectly match it, but they did sort of recreate that old cartouche that Jack himself had on the label. And it's in gold, it just pops right off of that label. And there's all kinds of nice little touches. And then we've got a batch number on the back label. We will be coming back with another 10 for the foreseeable future, sometime in the fall. I'm not going to promise any dates.

 

Lucas: No. It'll be ready when it's ready.

 

Chris: Yeah. Ready when it's ready. So again, I think most folks understand that when it comes to whiskey. But if it doesn't drop on September 1st every single year, don't worry, we're working on it. There's a lot of things that can happen that affect that launch date and the package being one of them. But it is a beautiful bottle. I think it certainly, it is so authentically Jack Daniel's. And I think it is an elevated sense of Jack Daniel's though. But if you think about Mr. Jack and the life he lived and wearing the top hat, the bow tie, the overcoat every day, having the grand ballroom with the big piano and throwing these great parties, and the high-end pocket watch from Switzerland and all these things, he was absolutely someone that appreciated pushing things a little further. And kind of having this little bit of, I guess, an elevated experience of his whiskey. And just the way that he lived his life, he did have an appreciation for things like this. And so it's really just an honor to be able to be the person in line that helps bring this back.

 

Lucas: Sure. What do you know about the initial availability on this? I mean, obviously if we're talking timeframe again, late August, early September from what we know for right now, what else can you tell us about availability?

 

Chris: Yeah. So it is nationwide. We've only got, I think it's a little less than 7,006 pack cases so there's not a lot of liquid on there. And that's an approximate number. We were bottling it up last week and that was, I know we were near that, but to be honest, I can't remember right now off the top of my head. So don't hold my feet to the fire on that number. It will be something that I imagine will go pretty quickly. The suggested retail price is $70. I think it's a great value at that as well.

 

Lucas: Sure.

 

Chris: Because certainly, we're not going to try to gouge anything on this and I think we're going to offer at $70 an absolutely beautiful, beautiful product. People are going to love it. And so I know I'm going to be in line to get mine.

 

Lucas: I think you might know somebody who might know somebody who might be able to get you some stuff, but no cutting the line on that. Well, again, Chris, congratulations on this release. It looks fantastic. I know people are going to be excited about having it on their shelves and hopefully equally excited about having it in their glasses as well.

 

Chris: Thank you. Yeah, I know I am. I just think it's a whiskey that will bring people together and get people talking. And more so than anything, to have that nod to our past and our history here, which I've got a connection to with my granddad, but even a lot farther than that, on this product. And then that's what I really want folks to be able to take away from this as they sip on a whiskey that hadn't been offered since Jack Daniel were here. So I hope everybody will raise a glass to Mr. Jack. And enjoy responsibly as always, but to raise that glass in his memory, in his recreation of something that hopefully he would be very proud of.

 

Lucas: Yeah. Chris Fletcher, thanks for joining us again on Around The Barrel.

 

Chris: Thanks so much, Lucas. Take care.

 

Lucas: Thanks for checking out this episode of Around The Barrel. For more on the innovation side of the Jack Daniel Distillery, check out episode three of season two and the origins of the Tennessee Tasters' Selection Series. And for more on the distillery's reflections on past products, check out season two, episode 11 with company historian, Nelson Eddy, and a look at the Jack Daniel's Legacy Edition lineup.

 

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 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.