Around the Barrel - Transcript - Ep047/Re046 - Chris Fletcher and Lexie Phillips
Chris Fletcher: We are going to innovate from grain all the way to the bottle. And we're going to push the envelope with grain bills, with proofs, with whatever we can do to drive what we think are interesting flavors into all of Jack Daniel's, whiskeys.
Lucas Hendrickson: For far too many in this "new is always better" world. The word innovation tends to mean blow everything up and start from scratch. When you're dealing with a brand with more than 150 years of experience and expectation, that definition simply will not stand. But it doesn't mean you can't, or shouldn't, make those small adjustments that can open up a world of new opportunities.
On this episode, we talk with current Jack Daniel's distillery team leaders, Chris Fletcher, and Lexie Philips about how looking through the lens of innovation, not only clarifies the past, but also reveals the future. How one year on Coy Hill can make a big difference in completely unforeseen ways, and how taking things up a notch yields spectacular results 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. One of the ongoing goals of making Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Tennessee whiskey is to make sure that it's a consistent experience, time and time again for friends and fans all over the world. It's a goal that takes experience and patience. But even in the midst of gaining and furthering those two crucial elements, keeping an eye on the future, both the long term and short term, is also of paramount importance.
Master Distiller, Chris Fletcher, and Assistant Distiller, Lexie Philips live both in the past and the future of whiskey making simultaneously. In their roles, they're charged with keeping the heritage of Mr. Jack's world, famous liquid, alive and thriving, but also using that base of knowledge to spin off new expressions that will keep friends of Mr. Jack talking, dreaming, acquiring, and enjoying for years to come. That spirit of innovation brought to the finish line the 10 years old age stated expression earlier this year, and recently introduced the single barrel special release affectionately referred to as Coy Hill for its warehouses of origin. And it's the piece that makes all the hard work for Lexie and Chris and the talented team spread throughout the many departments in the holler, that much more fun.
Lexie Philips: My name's Lexie Philips. I'm the Assistant Distiller here at the Jack Daniel's distillery.
Chris: Hey, this is Chris Fletcher, the Master Distiller here at Jack Daniel's.
Lucas: Lexie and Chris, welcome back to Around the Barrel.
Lexie: Thank you.
Chris: Thanks.
Lexie: Good to see you guys. As we talked to each of you over the years, the phrase "innovation lens" has come up a number of times, and obviously we've talked about specific brand new releases and also things like Tennessee Tasters and as well as what you do here on the day to day with Old No. 7 and all the other products that come along with it. You can both speak to this individually. What does that idea of innovation in the world of creating whiskey mean to each of you?
I'd really say that innovation is kind of the future of Jack Daniel's. While we are still preserving the traditions of making great whiskey, we still kind of want to stay relevant and see kind of what borders we can push a little bit in making a great product.
Lucas: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. To me, I think it's just fun.
Lucas: Right?
Lexie: Absolutely agreed.
Chris: To be able to do things. I've said it many times that this distillery is just such a beast, and it, as we know, can make very consistent whiskey, very high quality whiskey, but it can also flex its muscle. And then also with our team here of whiskey makers, from start to finish, they're fantastic. And it makes Lexie and my job a lot easier. And so to have these great people, these great whiskey makers here in Lynchburg, to go along with our distillery, to go along with our cooperages, our stave mills-
Lucas: Right.
Chris: When you think about that level of control that we have our hands on all along the way, why not innovate?
Lucas: Absolutely.
Chris: So...
Lucas: In the process of creating these new avenues of innovation for the distillery, do you have other sources of inspiration in your experience that have added to that well of knowledge that you can dip into and draw from for the projects you're working on?
Chris: There's never been an effort to recreate anything that anybody else has done here.
Lucas: Sure. Sure.
Chris: I mean a couple reasons. I think first and foremost, it has to be right for Jack Daniel's. If it's not a product that I feel like my grandfather would be proud of, then I immediately don't have a lot of interest. That's kind of my quick line in the sand that I won't cross on a personal level, but you do see things out there, but it could be across the alcohol beverage industry, it doesn't just have to be spirits even. I've spent time in Scotland and things, and seeing the utilization of sherry and other wines and obviously peat, and then different things that they're doing by recoopering used barrels and interesting things there. I've been fortunate enough to spend time in Mexico with some tequila distilleries.
Lucas: Right.
Chris: All kinds of different things that I've been fortunate enough to see in 20 years. And so taking that, but doing it in a Jack Daniel's way, the thing that really first comes to my mind is in the Tennessee Tasters releases we've done some barrel reunions. And we'll continue to look at barrel reunions, but that idea started of finishing. Obviously barrel finishing is being done and it's been done, and beer's being done, all kinds. I would say, in thinking about that, the first thing that really came to my mind, okay well how do we do this in a way that we could really be proud of it with Jack Daniel's, and do it in the Jack Daniel's way? And instead of just doing a barrel finish where yeah sure, we could go out and source barrels from any winery or wherever in the world we want to go source them, but you have to think, if we go to the length of taking a log, turning it into a stave, building that stave into a barrel, and all that effort in making your own barrels, and we know the quality of these barrels-
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: And we use them, and then they leave here-
Lucas: Right.
Chris: Why not keep your finger on them and bring them back. And so that's where it barrel reunion, or this homecoming idea, came because it quickly became... Anybody can finish anything in a barrel. It's pretty easy.
Lucas: Yeah. Right.
Chris: Not everybody can build their own barrel, use it, send it out and then bring it back home.
Lucas: Exactly.
Chris: And so that's where the barrel reunion idea came from. And, just as an example to your question, that's exactly, kind of how that came about.
Lucas: Yeah. Lexie, your career in this world has been obviously very, very focused on Jack Daniel's. What kind of things have you seen in your time? Not only in the seat that you're in right now, but also working your way up through the processes and on this massive complex, to again apply those innovation ideas as they've grown in your experience?
Lexie: And my experience with innovation really started after I came into this position. And I think being able to bring some of my background being in ag business or agriculture with the different grains that we can use here, I think that's the part that I'm most interested in, just seeing what different flavors or aromas we can bring into it, changing the grains around.
Lucas: Sure. Chris, you're a real student of the history of this company. Once it kind of got focused back down onto Old No. 7 as the primary product, what was maybe the first thing that kind of then became a part of that at innovation lens? Maybe as your grandfather was involved with it as well? I mean, I have to assume that the focus was so narrowly on Old No. 7, just trying to get it up to speed to be able to get it to all the places where people wanted it in the mid 20th century.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. I would say when my granddad was here and his team and everybody that was involved back in the fifties, sixties, through the eighties, they laid the foundation that we enjoy now. Old No. 7 continues, and will always get our focus here. The consistency of that whiskey is unmatched. I truly believe that. It's incredibly versatile, great in cocktails, easy to mix, easy to sip on, on the rocks, everything that we know and love about Old No. 7, and that's what's made it what it is today.
Lucas: Right.
Chris: You make a great point in your question. I was talking to somebody the other day. Isn't it amazing that they got it right with 80% corn, 12% malt, 8% rye? And what we can now do to it, whether it be with the 10 year old product and more aged today products that are in the works and coming, and we're so excited, or amazing barrel proof versions of our single barrel, look at what this traditional classic Old No. 7 grain bill process and product can do, and how many really interesting flavors that we can push into it. It's all things that, again to your point, in the sixties, seventies and eighties, when our product was allocated, there's no way they were going to slow down.
Lucas: Exactly.
Chris: What would this do?
Lucas: Yeah.
Chris: Old No. 7 was allocated from the mid to late fifties until about 1980 in the U.S., and people forget that. Nearly my grandfather's whole career, they never came close to making enough Jack Daniel's whiskey, and that was just for the U.S.
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: They had nothing leaving until those early to mid eighties when we started to go into Europe. It's just amazing to think about that. It speaks to the quality of Old No. 7, first of all, and to our benefit that they got it right back in the day.
Lucas: So really, if you look at the timeline of it though, then Gentleman Jack would've been that first innovative product that came out, once the feet were firmly underneath everybody in trying to get as much Old No. 7 out into the market, as it was requested. Do you think that the learnings from that, in the late eighties, I guess 1988 is when that came out for the first time, then again over the course of the last 30 some odd years, has rolled that ball down the hill of creating now the product line that you have today?
Chris: Yeah. Well, I think you just look at the American whiskey market in the eighties and nineties, it was bad news. It wasn't good. It was not good. And so 88 with Gentleman Jack, I think number one, I'd be honest, I think there was a lot nervousness throughout the company when they launched it. They didn't know how people would react to an innovation from Jack Daniel's. Which all the success of Old No. 7 that it had enjoyed, and really endured-
The downturn of American whiskey, Old No. 7 did. But as you continued to see, really starting in the seventies, eighties, nineties, the turn to clear spirits, vodka, certainly lighter, more mixability, lighter softer flavors, which obviously we all know and love as Gentleman Jack. And that was when they made the decision to do that, and it was a big deal. It was a big deal. The company went on and hired PR crew representatives to kind of help with the launch.
And kind of help. How do we do this the right way and assure people that this is another quality product coming from Jack Daniel's, coming from Lynchburg. It obviously worked out pretty darn well.
Lucas: Been okay.
Chris: Yeah. And then you see, as we get into the late nineties, early two thousands, single barrel comes out and that's really where you start to see the turn back to brown spirits.
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: And then, of course, as we roll into the 2005 and 10, and this Renaissance of American whiskey that we're continuing to enjoy, which is why we can sit here and talk about all the cool things that we're doing now, from grain all the way through the barrel and aging. And so, Lexie's working on some projects, she quite literally has a massive project rolling right now with some grain that we're going to be working on. And there's lots of moving parts. We got barrels flying all over the country. We got grain flying all over the state today, so we're deep into it. So even though the next one is getting ready to be launched, we are right now anywhere from two to five to 10 years out on the next one. We're working on it today.
Lucas: Sure. Talk about the single barrel special release project. This is four years in on this? Five years? I have-
Lexie: Four years.
Lucas: Four. Okay. And then this year's the Coy hill High Proof. We've heard about the specialness of Coy Hill specifically. Talk about the significance in history of that section of this distillery grounds for creating products moving forward.
Lexie: So Coy Hill, that is actually some of our oldest warehouses. That is on our Tract I, so this is also our highest elevation warehouses. And the Coy Hill, specifically, is coming off of the top floor of the warehouses, where there's normally three tiers of barrels on each floor. And on a couple of these warehouses, we were able to notch out a little spot for some more barrels to go right up against the ceiling.
Lucas: Oh wow.
Lexie: And that's what we would call the buzzard's roost.
Lucas: Sure.
Lexie: So we all know heat rises, so it gets very, very hot up there. And really the Southern summers of middle Tennessee. Really showed out on what we pushed these barrels to be, because I know Chris would agree that we had no clue that it would push the limits on... We didn't know what it would turn out to be. But these high proofs, these are from 137 to 148.
Lucas: Whoa.
Lexie: I mean, it is some magical liquid. We really did something special. I'll say really mother nature here did something special.
Lucas: You just helped put it in place.
Lexie: Exactly.
Lucas: For mother nature to do her work.
Lexie: Yes.
Lucas: Wow. I'm stunned by those numbers. Wow. Because I haven't seen the product yet.
Chris: We were too.
Lexie: Yeah. That's kind of how we were.
Lucas: So how many barrels went into that particular release?
Lexie: There was around 300 barrels.
Chris: Yeah. That's close.
Lucas: Okay.
Lexie: But they're not full barrels. Think of them, you know-
Lucas: Right. That was my next question, what was the yield off of those? I mean, obviously the angel share portion of that, the buzzard's roost as you call it, it's going to leak some of that stuff away. What kind of consistency did you see as far as how much stuff was evaporating off of those really high up barrels?
Chris: We ended up with about 4500, 6 packs.
Lucas: Okay.
Chris: Ish. I can't remember the exact number, but I'm in the ballpark there. So yeah, that's the thing is the buzzard's roost literally, like Lexie said, is where we notched through the top of the beam up above the third tier of a rick and we squeezed one more layer. And you do that very carefully, first of all.
Lucas: Right.
Chris: But secondly, we're tight on warehousing space here.
Lucas: Oh, sure.
Chris: That is no secret. We're continuing to expand. We're working on getting two new barrel houses built as fast as we possibly can do it, and to help meet the demand. So while it's not unheard of, for us to put barrels in those reaches, because it does give us more room, literally, it does kind of create sometimes this really interesting profile. And so these barrels spent nine years up there.
Lucas: Whoa.
Chris: Yes. It's August from 2012, it was three different entry dates, both in barrel house eight and 13. So what we would refer to as 108 and 113.
Lucas: Gotcha.
Chris: On Coy Hill. And so there's five total barrel houses up there and I know you're doing the math and you say, well that's six, but there's no 112. And I don't know why there's no 112.
Lucas: Well, there's a story for a new day.
Chris: Exactly.
Lucas: You got a 113, so just skipped over the 12. Okay. There's another story in there somewhere.
Chris: Yep. Well, welcome to Lynchburg. The numbering systems here are usually wrong anyway.
Lexie: Yeah.
Chris: But it's part of the fun of it.
Lexie: Jack Daniel's numbering. Yep.
Chris: But yeah, we started looking at these barrels a few years ago, three, four years ago. And I put them on hold at that time, not really knowing how we might use them. But knowing that location and they had already had really good age. They were basically a single barrel age at that point and were beautiful at that point, and it was just about the right opportunity. And then it kind of came around about, it was over a year ago, a year and a half ago, it was summer of 2020, we went in and sampled a bunch of them and the proofs were solid, I mean 140 plus, we thought wow, that's pretty special stuff.
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: And so we kind of locked it in at that point last summer for special release. For this year, knowing that hey, it's only going to get one more summer up there at most, put it right at nine years old. It wasn't about getting it to nine. I mean, we could have pulled it out of there at eight and a half and it would still been just as beautiful. But then we come in this past spring, then spring of 2021, and sampled it again just so we could kind of zero in on our range, and what it would be, and also for quality as well, to taste some samples and see where they were at, and we actually saw proofs pushing 160.
Lexie: Yes.
Lucas: Holy cow!
Chris: Well over 159. So the range in the bottle is, like you said, is 137 to 148.3. We couldn't put anything higher than that in the bottle, because as we tested that single barrel bottle in that cork closure, once you got above 150, when the whiskey got warm, it could push the cork up and down the bottle. The alcohol expands so fast. So we actually were only able to go to kind of the midpoint at 148.3. And I'll be honest with you, I've never seen proofs this high coming out of a barrel well above, almost 160. Right just knocking on the door. It's something about that. I don't know how really we did it. Well, we didn't do it. Mother nature did it.
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: Like Lexie said. Exactly right. But it's magic liquid. It's lightning in the barrel, in the bottle. I don't know. When we've dumped the whiskeys all out of there, we put whiskey right back up in there. I have no idea if we could ever recreate this.
Lucas: Sure.
Lexie: We're going to try though.
Lucas: Yeah.
Chris: We're going to try.
Lucas: Do you, at that point, go back though and look at what kind of those summers look like across that nine year time span and go, were there potential other factors that, not that you can ever recreate in that same sort of fashion, but go, okay this explains why this happened that way?
Lexie: I kind of like it being the magic of it.
Lucas: Sure.
Lexie: Not really.
Lucas: Of course.
Chris: Yeah. In other words, no we haven't done that.
Lexie: Yeah, no we haven't.
Chris: With as many things that we try to control and can control, if we could dial up another nine summers to mimic the last nine.
Lucas: Right. Sure. Yeah. Right.
Chris: That would be great. I'd be all for it. But that unfortunately is beyond the range-
Lucas: Of course.
Chris: -we have to control. But I think that also brings up a good point. We don't cycle barrel houses here.
Lucas: Right.
Chris: So we're not heating them, which a lot of distillers choose to do. And I'm not saying that's wrong at all. That's perfectly fine, but we don't. But if you stop and think that we were getting 160 proof whiskey, which is actually still in the barrel up there, because we don't have a bottle that can hold it.
Lucas: Right.
Lexie: Not currently.
Chris: We're working on that too. But the thing that, that was created naturally.
Lucas: Yeah.
Chris: With no heating of those barrel houses, mother nature did it. We sit about 250 miles-ish south of a lot of our friends up in Kentucky making bourbon. And I lived there 11, 12 years and worked with a lot of great folks up there and I've never seen anything like this before. It's amazing. And I believe, and by our research and some of our brand team members research, there's never been a straight American whiskey hit this level of proof before, because you're capped at barrel entry at 125, this is the highest proof straight American whiskey, that we know of, that's ever been released.
Lucas: Right.
Chris: Period.
Lucas: I want to jump back just a second though. You talked about checking and sampling off of those last year. Is there ever, not an opportunity, but a chance that one year's time can turn it bad. You took that extra year and obviously deepened it and bumped up that proof point. Is there any situation where it can go south on you for that extra timeframe? What is it about the patience that it takes to say, let's let this go another season?
Lexie: I'm still looking to experience it. I will follow in the future, trying to see when in my mind I feel like there would be a time when more of the oak tannins would take over. That's one, to me that's something very beautiful about this liquid that even it's such a high number in the proof, it's not like we were chasing a number on that as well.
Lucas: Sure.
Lexie: There's still such beautiful flavors in there for 148 proof. It still has a sweetness, it completely coats the tongue. So I'm sure there are some barrels or some years, year numbers that it would kind of come over to a little bit drier, more tannic, but I haven't seen it yet. I'm sure Chris, with a lot more experience, he knows a little more about that when that might happen.
Chris: Well, sure there's always that point, right? But we had, like I said, we'd been looking at this for about three years. So we had been sampling. I had tasted several barrels from these different lots up there, which is why I held them. So I felt good that we weren't going to go over the top with it.
Lucas: Right.
Chris: Now, I didn't know we were going to get to the proofs that we got to. I was very surprised when we went back in and did a more thorough sampling. I knew we were going to be big. I didn't know it was going to be that big. And so, to Lexie's point, this was absolutely not about chasing that proof. That was a surprise. And I knew it was going to be big, bold, full whiskey. It's buzzard's roost. I knew it was going to get close to nine years. I didn't know, just depending on the timing, I mean at that point a few weeks here and there it's not going to make a difference.
Lucas: Right. Right, right.
Chris: And one thing that I think that it does is it shows... a lot of people ask, well how long could you age single barrel on the top floor? Now that's different in each barrel house. Right? And it's different because it's a single barrel really at each barrel. So it just depends on how far you want to push it with each barrel. So you have to paint a bit of a broader brushstroke in our day to day, and with single barrel typically five to seven years is right. Sometimes closer to eight is right. And so you look, this got one more cycle on it, and it wasn't just top floor. This was literally the buzzard's roost up against the ceiling of the barrel house, and so it was in its most extreme spot. Now that being said, the Coy Hill houses are a lot of people's favorites. There's a lot of folks that have an affinity. I'm right at top of the list on that one as well, but a lot of our warehousing crew and a lot of our single barrel folks, you see those Tract I houses start rolling in there and they get a little extra excited. And so we knew it was in a great location just historically, but we have other houses though that make darker whiskeys.
Then on Tract II we have a few hillside, they're not like these hills, but they're kind of slopes, and we get some really dark whiskey out of some of those Tract II houses, which in general you wouldn't expect because it is typically a more low lying area, it's around our bottling hall, but we've got a handful of houses down there that really get dark. Tract III is kind of a big open field down there. We've got nine houses down there that make fantastic signal barrel whiskeys as well. And so, for whatever reason, it all came together on these. And thankfully we were looking on Coy Hill specifically those years ago and seeing what we had out there. And we've had, you mentioned some different things on Coy Hill that we've aged, the Heritage Barrel stuff.
We did a Heroes single barrel with Melvin Keebler that also came out of some Coy Hill houses as well, which was a beautiful whiskey as well for our military. Those little subtleties will always be, in Lexie and mine, be in the back of our mind. And what could we tease out in the future Coy Hill versus 10 Yard Hill versus Tract III, whatever the case may be. We've never really stopped and thought about that before, but we are starting to see these unique profiles coming through. And so there's just one more thing that we're anxious to start digging in with innovation.
Lucas: Yeah. I'm still trying to consistently wrap my head around the idea you guys have to live in the future so much. Looking at what you're doing today, literally putting in a still today, putting in barrels today and realizing five to seven to eight to 10 years down the road, what that might look like, smell like taste like, and yet also be very, very focused on the things that are going into the bottles and into the case boxes and all that stuff today. Does that ever get overwhelming for you, to try to balance those living in the present and the future at the same time?
Lexie: To me, I think that really teaches me a lot of patience.
Chris: Yeah. I think whiskey making is not quick return.
Lucas: Nope.
Chris: That's just no way to do it. Trust me. I mean, we've tried that too in my years in R & D. If it's been done with a barrel, we've tried it. I tell you, we've turned them wrong side out and re-charred them and everything else. Big barrels, little barrels, cycling barrel houses, so we've tried everything here. I mean, you can go back in our history. I mean, stuff that's being marketed today on labels, we were doing it in the early sixties here.
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: It's just so funny and ironic to see that, but again, the thing is, American whiskey is so hot right now. There's a lot of marketing going on. There's not a lot of different whiskeys out there. But there's a lot of different labels and a lot of different stories that go behind the same whiskeys. And so any little thing has become marketable in whiskey. And I view our job as distillers is to take what could be little things and just blow them wide open.
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: And that is where we're going with innovation. That's where I'd like to see it to continue to go. And Lexie's absolutely been a huge help with this because we are going to innovate from grain all the way to the bottle. And we're going to push the envelope with grain bills, with proofs, with whatever we can do to drive what we think are interesting flavors in all of Jack Daniel's whiskeys.
Lucas: Yeah. What kind of things can you at this point, and we are talking in early November, can you kind of nod at, or hint at, for the first part of 2022 for people who are excited about what's coming next down the path?
Chris: Well, we've hit get a bit of a delay in our Tennessee Tasters. I'm sure people are questioning, what's the delay? We're trying to get bottles and looking at bottles. We may have to change bottles up a little bit. We've hit some issues in sourcing that same exact glass bottle, so when you do that, then you have to go back and make sure that it runs down the lines exactly correctly, the labels then might not fit perfectly. So we got to make sure we got everything lined up there. So we are working on that. We hear you. We've got some fantastic Tennessee Tasters distillery releases coming. Lexie, especially, has rye whiskey.
Lucas: I was going to say, I've been hearing about this for a while.
Lexie: Super excited.
Lucas: I'm waiting to taste it.
Chris: You can get me a bottle.
Lexie: That's it.
Chris: But no, we are-
Lucas: Have to bring one with me.
Chris: We're working on that, but unfortunately right now I cannot give you a date.
Lucas: Sure.
Chris: I don't know when it will be ready, because we've got to get it right. We got to do it right, for sure. And then looking in into next year, as we get into the summer season, we are looking at certainly some more newer world offerings here that you'll see. We are also working on special release, single barrel special release, that will be coming next year as well. Trying to lock that in. I think you're going to see the single barrel special release really start to show more, I guess you call it risk. I can't remember exactly what word you used Lucas.
Lucas: There you go.
Chris: But anyway, we're going to start to really innovate and get out of the box. We've been Tennessee whiskey with a little different barrel and no barrel proof and we've done barrel proof rye, but the bigger, bolder innovation ideas are coming. And we're going to continue to push that. Obviously we'll have another round of age dated whiskeys as well. You're going to see other proofs coming from Jack Daniel's. And I just think there's just such a range of different flavors and offerings that we can put in the bottle for folks, and people are interested in it. They're interested in trying new things in American whiskey and different flavors. And they're learning about the process. And I think the beauty of it all to me is with these new and different offerings, it gives us a chance to tell about our process and how we make our whiskey.
How we make every bottle of Old No. 7 is with every bit the same care, just like we talked about with the Coy Hill. I mean, these barrels could have absolutely gone into a single barrel offering, could have absolutely even gone in the Old No. 7, at its core, its DNA, it is Old No. 7 whiskey. And the same thing is true with the 10 year old. So that's the great part about this, is it gives us the opportunity to talk more about how we make our whiskey every single day here.
Lucas: Yeah.
Chris: Right. And it's very carefully thought out and planned. This is not an accident. We're not losing barrels or anything. That does not happen, but day in and day out when you make great whiskey, you're able to do things like this.
Lucas: Yeah. It's not an either or situation, it's a both, and you've got all these things that you can then turn into these fantastic new products. But as you say, at the core, it's DNA is Old No. 7, and it's such a great way to show the versatility of the process and how it's been happening for 150 plus years and also point towards the future of the brand, and all the things coming from Lynchburg.
Chris: Yep.
Lucas: Well, Chris, Lexie, thank you again for your time, your service to the fans of the liquid. And again, happy holidays. And we look forward to seeing you again Around the Barrel.
Lexie: Happy holidays. Thanks for having us back, Lucas.
Chris: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Lucas: 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 2021, Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel's Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.
