Tour Guide: So this is our Whiskey Trail, there's Tennessee whiskey distilleries all over the state of Tennessee. You'll go to him and you will get your passport stamped anytime that you check in there. Once you complete the passport, you do get a free t-shirt for doing the Tennessee Whiskey Trail, so it's kind of our down south version of the one a little bit further up north. 

 

Lucas Hendrickson: For more than a hundred and fifty years, the Jack Daniel Distillery has put its stamp on the definition of Tennessee whiskey, the very reason we're doing this podcast, but since 2009 and thanks to changes in spirits legislation in the state of Tennessee, dozens of new distilleries have started telling their own stories in the Volunteer state.  On this episode of Around the Barrel, we look at the shared space distilleries both big and small can occupy in the 21st century, how a common vision for the future crafted what's now known as the Tennessee Distiller's Guild, and how the words "Tennessee whiskey" blazed a trail that is now attracting visitors from all over the world. Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. When you mention the word "Tennessee" outside the borders of the actual state, and especially when you do it outside the U.S., people's thoughts can turn to two things: music and Jack Daniel's. The music thing can get complicated, with country music and the various superstars who have emerged over the decades jumping to the front of the line. But Jack tends to dominate the conversation when it comes to the idea of Tennessee whiskey. These days however, Jack's is not the only voice you'll hear. Since 2009, micro distilleries have emerged across the state which has allowed new and exciting products to hit store shelves, as well as pull back the curtain on small-batch whiskey production and the experimentation that lets those products grow. Today we talk to two people heavily involved in shaping the new Tennessee Whiskey Trail, one voice you've already heard from on this show, and the other a man who traded the practice of law for the art of whiskey. 

 

Heath Clark: Hello, my name is Heath Clark. And I'm the Master Distiller at H. Clark Distillery, which is just up the road in Thompson's Station. We're a little bit smaller than Jack Daniel's and it's good to be back in Lynchburg. I grew up just down the road in Tullahoma and make a lot of trips this way to check on the family farm and come visit lots of family. So there's actually a little bit of my family here at Jack Daniel's. So it in a lot of ways does feel like home. 

 

Jeff Arnett: My name is Jeff Arnett. I'm the Master Distiller at the Jack Daniel Distillery.

 

Lucas: Heath, Jeff, thank you for joining us Around the Barrel. 

 

Jeff: Yeah, it's good to be here.

 

Heath: Happy to be here. Thanks for asking. 

 

Lucas: So Jeff, we've spoken with you already about your role in the process and the whole bunch of stuff dealing with Jack Daniel Distillery, we will tap into your expertise a lot as we go along with this podcast, but Heath, tell us about your whiskey journey. How did you get started making whiskey? How and why did you make the jump from being an attorney into being a whiskey maker.

 

Heath: You know, I think it was maybe the quest for an honest profession. I'm not sure. No, the the reality is my whiskey journey started here in Lynchburg, and so my mom's got two brothers. Both of them are engineers here at Jack Daniel's, and for years, you know Fourth of July or Christmas, we were always picking up hams or dropping them off up on the smoker which is now Barbecue Hill and so, you know by my Uncle Bill would drag us along with him and occasionally go check on stuff and I just fell in love with the process, the smell, the aromas, this all-natural product and I think a lot of civic pride and this part of the state, you know, you can just feel it when you walk the grounds here and then also look through the shops and Lynchburg and Tullahoma. There's a lot of pride and what starts right here. So apparently, I spent a lot of time talking about how whiskey was made and you know, "Jack Daniel's would do it this way, George this way," and so eventually some folks around me told me I need to stop talking about it and go do it. And so this was about ten years ago, which you know at the time it was illegal to do this stuff in Tennessee and all but three counties and so I know a lot of your listeners are, you know, the the fact that you know Moore county is a dry county, but they make Jack Daniel's here, is one of these quirks of the statutes that we lived under which is you have to vote on liquor by the drink access separately than manufacturer. So when I sort of got the notion to go make whiskey the problem was 92 counties prohibit it, out of Tennessee's 95, and so I bet the people that were okay with drinking whiskey were also okay with people making it, and so I got involved in legislation back in 2009 that really got that put in place. And so with that passage we've gotten from three distillers in the state to I guess we're close to 40, right? 

 

Jeff: Yeah at least DSP holders and people who are working on facilities. But yeah, it's exploded, absolutely. 

 

Speaker: DSP meaning?

 

Jeff: like a distillers permit, a manufacturer's permit.

 

Lucas: So what were the other challenges of trying to get those legislative efforts underway and convincing the right people that you know, let's expand it to be a statewide thing?

 

Heath: You know, there had been a number of bills that had come through over the years where it was going, you know, let's make it legal to distill in Davidson County without a referendum, and you know they would fail, and so to me if there was anything that was going to have a shot it had to be big tent. Let's open this up. You know, we've got a rich distilling heritage in the state, this prohibition didn't stop people from making alcohol, and so let's make it big tent, I bet there are some other folks who have similar ideas out there. And the second thing was let's preserve choice, you know growing up in Tullahoma, I remember liquor by the drink referendum coming to the ballot and as odd as that might seem that it was controversial now, it was a big deal when it came through, and so by limiting, you know, manufacturer option to cities and counties that have already approved liquor by the drink and retail package, that mechanism preserved choice, and so by leaving the dry counties alone and just focusing on folks who had already been focused on access, it really allowed, well it sort of took your opposition off the board, in a lot of ways, and so that proves to be the easy part for me so I didn't get started until 2014 so it took a little bit of learning and you know people ask me how I figured out how to make the whiskey which is kind of ironic that you can't actually make whiskey until you're licensed, but in the license process you have to demonstrate your ability to make it.  So, you know, I just went and bought a lot of textbooks, built that knowledge base on either the biology or the chemistry, the physics and every now and then I had a pretty good resource to fall back on if I got stuck. 

 

Lucas: Sure. Now Jeff, you were with Jack Daniel's when all of this kind of was coming up and these law changes were happening. Can you talk about what the distilleries' view of these micro distilleries, or at least the potential of these micro distilleries coming into the state and doing a little bit of competition there?

 

Jeff: Sure, you know, I think for Jack Daniel's part in this, we got to know a lot of the small distillers across the state when legislation was introduced that not only changed the prohibition that so many counties across the state had to not be able to produce distilled spirits, but that we would create a definition on a state basis that would define what Tennessee whiskey is, and then in absence of a guild there wasn't like the KDA has the Distillers Guild up in Kentucky and most of the prominent people are represented by that group. We did not have that at the time, so it forced us to start kind of making some phone calls and saying hey, I'm Jeff and I'm at Jack Daniel's and this is kind of what we're thinking and what we would like to do and just want to know that you would be a stakeholder on anything that was written, how do you feel about it? Which you know, not everybody agreed but I want to say it was pretty consistent, at least 80% or more of the industry agreed that we should have a standard that would kind of preserve the heritage of Tennessee whiskey and in the midst of that legislation passing and being actually contested for a couple of years, it really kind of gave us a purpose to get together and talk and so we started meeting about every month or gathering in Nashville or at somebody's distillery, kinda getting to know one another and seeing one another's operations and I realized we had a lot in common. We certainly I think have more to gain by working together than we do by trying to oppose or work against one another and I think that's largely just the distilled spirits industry, even though we are competitive, I give us credit for being largely a gentleman's industry where we really try to work together, understanding that we don't want anybody to be a bad player, and part of that is let's hold one another accountable so that others don't have to come in and call us out. So I definitely think that that's going on in Tennessee and has been very good for Tennessee that we've come together, we've created a vision for own individual distilleries. But also how we can work together to create Tennessee as a destination and continue to build that reputation for spirits whether it be whiskey or gin or vodka or whatever you might be making. 

 

Lucas: So that is essentially the beginnings of the Tennessee Distiller's Guild, how many members of that Guild right now? And were there templates other than what Kentucky does as far as how to kind of put that together and are there other statewide organizations throughout the country that are similar to this? 

 

Jeff: Yeah. I'll answer a little bit of that. Yeah, we definitely looked at Kentucky and what they had done in creating the KDA and we reached out on several occasions trying to get their bylaws and things like that. But they do tend to keep these things close to the vest and didn't necessarily want to share that stuff, but we had a pretty good idea of you know, one of the things that are going to be topics of discussion, I think in one of the first, once we had officially formed the guild we kind of spent a year trying to work through relationships and what our mission and vision and everything was, but I called in an expert, you know, somebody who works with private businesses to just kind of facilitate us through that process to say, you know, what are everybody's wishes by being here? You know, what do you hope to accomplish about being part of a guild? Let's see what the common threads are. So everybody kind of had an equal say, so it wasn't necessarily that Jack Daniel's dictated the conversation. We were just one voice out of two dozen or more that were in the room that day and what we found is that we had some stuff that were kind of burning or pressing things that we'd all like, we deal in an industry that has laws that were largely written in the late 30s, and if you look at and compare those to the laws that would dictate other forms of beverage alcohol, like wine or beer, ours are pretty archaic, you know, they're not as progressive I would say right now as wine or beer. So we saw an opportunity to kind of do that and we adopted this term of parity that we don't want to be treated better, we don't want to be treated worse. We just want to get the same rights to manufacture and market our product as wineries and breweries do. So, that's kind of been a thrust for us every time we see legislation whether it's in our industry or not, whether it be distilled spirits, we're just kind of looking at it saying "Hey, we don't want to get left out." So, you know if there's going to be something that would say hey, be a benefit to beer, wine, why would you exclude distilled spirits from that same thing? So we started doing that but also, of course we were looking at Kentucky and all the success of their Bourbon Trail and said, you know, that's another thing that we'd all I think like to do, is have, you know people see Tennessee to be a destination not just for great music but also to stay a few days and and hit some of the distilleries around the area.  

 

Lucas: So part of the emergence of these businesses over the past almost 10 years now has been the emergence of the Tennessee Whiskey Trail. Tell me about how that came about. Was it something where you approach the State tourism board or just all kind of came together at the same time to make sense? What was the origin of that, of this endeavor?

 

Jeff: Now you know, I think when we would get together as a group at the Distiller's Guild you heard repeatedly that people had some interest in forming this. It wasn't until after we had this facilitated session. We were going to basically establish what our vision and mission was as a group of Guild members. Also setting some priorities behind, you know, we can't work on everything, the water the things that we think benefit the most of our membership and we identify what those are. The Whiskey Trail was one of the top two items that people wanted to work on. So at that point, of course, we have tried to make it affordable as far as being in the Guild, and tried not to have exorbitant membership dues placed on any particular manufacturer. So we're not necessarily heavily funded, if you look at the way the Kentucky Distiller's Association is done there, they assess a barrel tax and it can be a pretty steep price of admission there. So we're like, let's not do that because we don't have seven or eight large distilleries like Kentucky does that can share that burden, there's really just one or two that have reached that size and we're not asking for a bigger say just because we're Jack Daniel's. We're just going to be one voice of you know, 30 that are part of the membership. So but nevertheless, in kind of working through, you know, what people wanted to work on, the trail was near the top and we said hey, you know, we've got a lot to offer but we're going to need some help. So we we're looking for a logical partners. We did, we contacted the Department of Agriculture, because a lot of our distilleries are buying local grain, you know, so there was that whole Pick Tennessee angle that we felt like was there but also ECD were one of the fastest growing industries in the state, they were hiring people and if we can have a successful trail then we're probably going to hire people that would just do that, give tours, you know beyond production. People if it's successful, so that and of course tourism, you know I think Tennessee is a great destination for a lot of reasons, but I don't think normally it gets recognition, not like Kentucky does that people will literally go to Kentucky for the expressed reason of just touring distilleries and I don't think Tennessee has been seen that way but I think we have the right, we have the heritage and the history and Tennessee could be on an equal playing field with Kentucky where you would see people coming into Nashville or Knoxville or Memphis and they would be some mechanism that would say from where you're standing, this is the closest distillery, how you'd get there, and what its operating hours are. And so we just started to kind of, you know, put some resourcing behind that we were able to pick up some partnerships within the state of Tennessee to help us get that accomplished but you know, we're off and running, and it's been a great thing to see you know the people who literally took it from a concept of just sitting around in a room and talking about it to see actual collateral, where you see passports and websites and mobile apps being created for it. It's really been cool to be a part of that process from from the beginning. 

 

Lucas: And that's what I was going to touch on next. There's fantastic little booklets called passports, the website is very robust. People can get all the information that they want off of that, and then obviously the mobile app from the the App Store and Google Play you can get your Android or iOS apps that go along with that where you check in to the distillery and you can take notes about what your experience was like there.  Have you each had kind of interactions with fans that have not only hit your own places, but also have made their way deep into the trail and what are their stories like coming back to you? 

 

Heath: We had a little celebration in November for the first three people who finished the trail, and so we invited them up to Townsend for the weekend and introduced them to tourism ECD in the other distillers. And you know these folks were just thrilled to be recognized but even more thrilled to have gotten to meet everybody that was in the room, and it takes a special person to be able to travel or want to travel 600 miles across the state to come see big and small and far and wide. And the consistent theme we get back is how unique each distillery is and so for an industry where the process is the same, like there's there's no real magic way of, there's not a new way to distill or ferment. But so you take the same process and you shake it up and there's 30 different iterations of it all across the state. And so how we do things is certainly different than how Jack does things which is different than George, which is different than Old Forge, but you look across the state and people can feel it. They can sort of sense place and how certain distilleries approach the process and I think that's, with all the newness that's in the industry, anchored by the historic, that's just a great place to be from an industry perspective right now. You've got Tennessee whiskey being made, we make gin, we've got folks making rum, I think Corsair makes a quinoa whiskey, you know, so there's the amount of experimentation that's going on right now is pretty cool. You know, I don't know how long this, you know, phase of the industry will last but it's going to be a pretty magical time the next you know, five or ten years in Tennessee. 

 

Jeff: Yeah, you know talking or thinking about what he that said earlier that, you know, getting in the industry, kind of going to read the books and trying to figure out understanding the science of what you're getting into, you know, the science across our 30-40 distilleries in Tennessee. It's all the same. It's not like you pull into the Lynchburg Hollow and gravity, you know ceases to exist. So we're all kind of bound by the same, you know, science principles of fermentation and distillation, but it's the art with which you apply the science that you see is where the real interest comes in and there's you know, I don't think that there's really any way you can read a book and become an expert spirits maker, you'll do that through trial and error and that's how you'll create your own unique artwork. I always say it's like everybody is given the same 64 crayons in a box, but we'll color with that will be very different but it's been great to see. Like I said, being a native Tennesseean myself. I love the state of Tennessee. I moved away for a few years and was anxious to get back and swore that when I got back to Tennessee, I wouldn't leave again, but I think Tennessee has so much to offer whether it be in spirits, music, the people here are friendly, the topography of changes that go between Memphis and Bristol that's just a beautiful state to drive across. 

 

Lucas: So what do you think the future looks like for this Trail? Do you think there will be additions to it as more distilleries open? Again the Topography of Tennessee being a fairly long and narrow state but there's all kinds of corners going on in there. Who else is kind of on the horizon there do you think? 

 

Jeff: You know, of course, we encourage everybody who's going to be a State producer to join the trail if they want to, but you don't have to. We do have people who are in the Guild who just kind of the way they're going to operate their facility, they're saying we really don't want to take time out and walk people through, we're just you know, we're going to be maybe a contract producer we're going to make a lot of spirits and make it available and we're going to you know, do distillery to distillery transfers if you will right now, so you have a few people that kind of have a different model than saying I want people to knock at my door, so we don't force that on anyone and actually we have people who have DSPs who've never come to a guild meeting that we don't include on the trail either and that's simply because we all agreed as a group of manufacturers who wanted to be part of a trail that we would ensure that if people came to our doors, you know we have different capability levels, clearly Jack Daniel's, we're a larger distillery. We have professional tour guides. We have set hours, but the people who've said that I'll be a part of the trail have assured us that if they come to the door, my Rottweiler's not going to eat them in the backyard, that I'm going to be, you know, it's going to be hospitable. I'm going to do my best to show them a good time, that I'm going to try to offer a quality product within the means that I have. So that was, and we've all signed agreements of code of ethics, where we're like hey, we're you know, the things that we say when people are at our facilities, the labels that we produce and sell under, we don't want to be offensive, we want to keep you know, everything kind of above the belt and make sure that every everybody is benefiting. You know, the rising tide will raise all ships, let's just make sure that we're not taking on water somewhere.

 

Heath: Well, and you know, if your kids are with you you ought to bring them to the distillery, they might not be able to sample the product but they ought not be embarrassed by what you see there. And so we've taken positions, you know, there already and I think it holds the quality of the product for people out of state to a higher level by holding each other accountable. 

 

Lucas: Sure. Yeah. 

 

Jeff: Unfortunately, we did have a code of ethics violation that we proved that it was not just words on a paper, that we meant it, and took action just to make sure that you know, if we're going to be a partner with the state of Tennessee, we don't want to do anything that would bring shame upon those departments that have basically shown a belief in us as an industry to be able to provide a great tourism experience to be able to grow jobs, to be able to promote agriculture, because that's what one of the largest industries of the state of Tennessee today. So there's so many synergies there.

 

Heath: And believe it or not, you know, one of the first things we did as a guild with the trail was put limits on ourselves and what we could serve as samples that our own distilleries, and so we sort of looked up that there's no limit. You can give all the samples you want. That's probably not a good idea. You know, let's regulate ourselves before the state does it and so, you know, there are folks come to our distilleries and we only pour so much. That's because we asked for that limitation, right and the state was happy to oblige. 

 

Jeff: And we have done the same thing here. Of course, we don't have any distilleries within walking distance of Jack Daniel's, we're kind of out of here by ourselves. If you take one of our tasting tours, you're going to get equivalently the amount of alcohol you have in maybe one cocktail. So we feel like that's a responsible level of serving that people should be fine to drive away. So we always want to kind of keep that first and foremost. We want them to be educational, more than anything else giving you a chance to sample. We're really kind of thought of as being one whiskey but we've got 10 different offerings in the marketplace today so we have two different tour formats and offer five products each. So it's meant to be education. It's a good time. Clearly. We want people to you know, laugh and enjoy the history of the distillery and the stories that they'll hear, but more importantly we just don't want to have anybody leave here and have an accident or anything like that. I was one of the things I think we have struggled with and I know the distilleries have begun to talk to one another when they're in close proximity to one another it's like, where do we stop and you begin? And you know if somebody goes to five different distilleries in a row, it wasn't the individual serves of one distillery. It was the combination of them in succession. So they have started trying to look at how can we monitor people who've come through our facility and may be coming to yours and figure out you know, how to be a Safe Serve organization. So, but like I said, we try to impose those things on ourselves, that's one of the things as a guild we have talked long and hard about because we understand that the actions of one could harm the whole, and and our industry just doesn't want to have those types of pressures placed on us. 

 

Lucas: So what is the overall importance of that Tennessee whiskey designation to not only what you're doing now, but also what you're doing going forward, that actual law in place about what defines Tennessee whiskey?

 

Jeff: You know, I think it was important for us because I think we've got a great whiskey making heritage in the state of Tennessee, but that largely spoke to this practice of charcoal mellowing. It was the thing that Tennessee kind of offered as it's been on how to make a great whiskey and it wasn't just a Jack Daniel's thing. Maybe you know, we have, were kind of the ones who had been carrying the torch for so long, but it was years ago. It was the thing that kind of differentiated Tennessee spirits. They were called Lincoln County whiskeys, sold under this kind of big bucket of different styles of whiskey that would be different than bourbon. You know, I thought was kind of interesting and we got some friends at Nelson's Greenbrier and they're a very interesting story because they're a new distillery. They've been built in the last six or seven years but back before the days of prohibition their great-great-great grandfather and was one of the biggest producers in the state of Tennessee and they've been able to go back and do some family research and there were stories about Charles Nelson and George Dickel and Jack Daniel's sitting down and talking about the merits of Tennessee whiskey and how they wanted it to be kind of, for the very thing that happened, a law to be written in a way that would define Tennessee whiskey and kind of change its stature in the world of spirits. And you look at like Scotch whisky, it has, you have to be more than just a whiskey made in Scotland to be called Scotch, that's part of it. But there's a lot of laws that kind of dictate how you can make it and what you have to do to be called a single malt or blended Scotch whisky. So there's about you know, 10 or 12 different points of law that you have to satisfy to label yourself a certain way. And of course Kentucky has done the same thing, they'd taken a federal code that was bourbon whiskey and they've written a law that was basically the Kentucky Straight Bourbon law. So they understood that people found value in the Kentucky name and they didn't want tankers of whiskey driving through the state of Kentucky and calling themselves Kentucky whiskeys just because they drove from one end of the state to the other. Like it needs to be made here, it needs to be matured here, there are certain things that it needs to be tied to Kentucky if it's going to take our name, and Tennessee can was kind of in that unique spot too, the words "Tennessee" on your label I think add value and can help you sell your product. But at the same time we need to be protective of that. There's an equity in our name today that maybe could go away if you had a few people come in and just try to cash out on it. So that was the conversations that we were having, we didn't want it to be restrictive, we didn't certainly didn't want it to hinder innovation, but to have something that was written that would kind of preserve heritage but then it but also kind of build up the words Tennessee whiskey and it be a name and a label that we can all share and do it all our different ways. But ensure that the quality is there. 

 

Heath: It'd be hard to overstate, I think the the value of the Tennessee whiskey as a brand, for me in a start-up, you know, a very young distillery. It provides an umbrella and an assumption of of legitimacy, you know making whiskey in Thompson Station, and we don't do a charcoal mellowing process primarily because I can't control that process because we're so small, but to have a Tennessee product, you don't have to convince people that it's legitimate. You know, I think it would be harder if it was, you know, Missouri or you know Arkansas if that's you know, they're probably just as good at doing it as we are, if they tried hard enough, but we get that moniker in Tennessee that's just not available to anybody except maybe Kentucky. I think yeah brand legitimacy, you know travels with these two states.

 

Jeff:  But yeah, I think you know there had to be something of value there who would have wanted to have written a song and sing it, you know, that was featuring Tennessee whiskey? And that people would relate to that just that, just that mere title. So there's obviously value in it. Like I said, it's something that we're pretty passionate about at Jack Daniel's and we certainly have a lot at stake behind the words Tennessee whiskey meaning something and we were very happy that the bulk of the Distiller's Guild and the manufacturers across the state saw it just as we did that we were like, hey, we've got a common heritage that we share. Let's go ahead and make those words hallowed. Let's make sure we're following the correct process. I may not make Tennessee whiskey, I may make bourbon, I may make gin, I may make a lot of different products, but I will reserve the words, Tennessee whiskey for that process. 

 

Lucas: Jeff, Heath, thank you for your time. I'm sure we'll touch back with you guys. As this podcast rolls along, as the Tennessee Whiskey Trail continues to mature as well. Thank you so much for your time. 

 

Heath: Well happy to be here. Thank you. 

 

Jeff: Thank you. 

 

Lucas: Around the Barrel is the official podcast of the Jack Daniel Distillery. Follow the podcast on the web at JackDaniels.com/podcast, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, and review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you gather your on-demand audio. Always remember with great podcast and great whiskey, please enjoy responsibly. Join us next time for more conversations "Around the Barrel." Your friends a Jack Daniel's remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel's and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2018, 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.