Around the Barrel - Transcript: Ep020 Lexie Amacher & Jessica Hartline
Jessica Hartline: You just don't really have the opportunity to work at Jack Daniel's stillhouse anywhere else in the world, and if you do work in someone else's stillhouse, it's not Jack Daniel’s.
Lucas Hendrickson: When you pour the beautiful amber liquid known as Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 out of its iconic square bottle, it's sometimes easy to forget all the hard physical work it took to get that whiskey into that bottle.
Thousands of pounds of grain, thousands of gallons of cave spring water, steaming column stills, vats filled with hard sugar maple charcoal through which that new whiskey filters and mellows. It's the exclusive domain of workers with a singular goal: “Everyday we make it, we'll make it the best we can.”
That set of workers most certainly includes women. On this episode, we talked with Lexie Amacher and Jessica Hartline, two women firmly rooted in not only the tradition, but also the future of making Jack Daniel’s every day.
We talk about their individual paths to the distillery, how both easy and hard it was to weave their way into what can be a boy’s club and their pride at seeing folks enjoy the product they make 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. Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Tennessee whiskey and its various offshoots is made to be enjoyed by everybody – if you're over the age of 21 in the United States, that is.
These days more and more women are not only enjoying whiskey, more and more women are involved in the making of the product as well. Jessica Hartline and Lexie Amacher are both middle Tennessee natives, having grown up around the legend and lore of Lynchburg, the distillery’s longtime home.
Lexie and Jessica each took different paths to their roles directly making Jack Daniels, navigating through what they thought would be complicated work situations involving gender, but finding that if you can do the work and do it well, those complications can go away.
Lexie Amacher: Hey, my name is Lexie Amacher. I am one of four team leads at the Jack Daniel Distillery. I'm from Estill Springs, Tennessee, where I currently live. I’ve been working here about five years. Yeah, that's about it.
Jessica: I'm Jessica Hartline, and I am the quality supervisor and senior packaging engineer at the bottling house. I've been at Jack Daniel's coming up on 12 years. I grew up in a small town about an hour northwest of here called “Santa Fee,” Tennessee. I cannot say “Santa Fe.”
Lucas: Lexie, Jessica, welcome to Around the Barrel. Thanks for taking a little time out of your day to come talk with us about women in whiskey for lack of a better, simpler term. First, Jessica, you studied microbiology and chemistry. Lexie, you studied agribusiness. You grew up in this area. What was it about your individual interests that pushed you towards the whiskey business?
Jessica: I would say my husband was working temporary for a few years here in warehousing and, we just got to know a lot of the employees that were at the distillery at the time.
Through some of these events I've met some stillhouse employees, and at one point, I had already graduated college, was looking for something a little closer to home and found an opportunity where they had an opening for someone at the stillhouse with a biology background. I just started asking questions and was interested in what that role was.
It manifested into an opportunity to interview and go forth and have the opportunity to work there. That's really where it started. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was terrified to death. I was 24 at the time. I just saw it as, “I think I can do this and I think it would be interesting to be able to have this as something in my back pocket.”
Lucas: Okay. Lexie?
Lexie: She's a lot better speaker than me. After I got out of college, I came and started working temporary. My grandmother had retired from here and my great aunt still worked here.
Of course, I lived maybe 30 minutes from here. It was just somewhere that I kind of felt like it would be a really, really cool place to work, to have a lot of pride in and be able to tell people you work at Jack Daniel's because everybody knows where that's at.
It was actually Jessica that got me interested in the stillhouse. I worked with her temporary in the lab, and one of the jobs had come open. She was like, “Girl, this job would be perfect for you. You would love this.”
I talked to a few other past stillhouse workers. It sounded like something I would absolutely love and five years later, I do absolutely love it. It is so interesting, every aspect of it. I'm really glad that I made it here.
Lucas: Right. It sounds like you kind of hit the ground running and learned a lot on the job. What were the kinds of things that led you through those roles to where you are today?
Lexie: I learned so very much on the job. I'm so thankful for all the guys that I've worked with. My dad, he was always a very mechanical person. I always loved taking things apart and seeing how they work, and part of what we do at the stillhouse is breaking everything down to see how it works.
I think just keeping that interest going – never really stopping learning – I think that's really got me ahead above some, and even five years later, I still learn new things every day on how the whole process works and how other departments are working.
Jessica: Having worked with Lexie, she did have that can-do mentality and there was just something about her. Lexie, you're not afraid to get dirty. You're not afraid to get sweaty, and it’s just your overall nature of being interested, asking questions and not being afraid to say, “I don't know, but I do want to know.”
Gosh, this was almost five years ago, and I told her, “You will love the work. You just don't really have the opportunity to work at Jack Daniel's stillhouse anywhere else in the world, and if you do work in someone else's stillhouse, it's not Jack Daniel’s. It's just an interesting group of people.”
I wanted to share that with her because this is women in whiskey. Sometimes there's that stigma or that perception that women can't do that, won't do that or steer clear of it. I'm one of those to say that's not the case. You can do it. I'm proud of her for taking that bull by the horns, and she's done so well.
Lucas: How many women overall work here at the distillery in Lynchburg as part of the actual production process? Obviously the visitor center, sales teams and stuff like that might have a higher ratio of women to men, but as far as the production side, how many women are involved?
Lexie: Sometimes when you think of production at Jack Daniel’s, you do focus on the whiskey making, but there's another part to it. That's the bottling, and that's still production. There’s a massive production mentality down at the bottling house.
It is probably more of a majority of women in the bottling house. We have quite a few men. I don't even know how to pin a number to it. I think you see less on the whiskey making side of it mainly because you don't need as many people as you do bottling it.
For an example for the stillhouse, when I came in back in 2007, there was already a lady working there, and I know of at least two other women that had worked in the stillhouse before me. The lady I worked with is just now retiring,
Jessica: Her retirement party is today.
Lexie: She has been there for a long time and that's probably that one department where you don't get a big crossover in the gender, at least when I had started. It has gotten so much more diverse with the men and women ratio.
I think it's just one of those openings where you just realize you don't have to be a man. Women can do this, and it's intimidating, but you just jump right in with both feet. If you have the can-do attitude, anybody can do it, but you've got to really commit to it. It’s a commitment
Jessica: It’s very intimidating first going into it, but I mean, once you meet your team and hang out with all the guys, they are right there beside you working really hard, and they want you to succeed, too. Gender really doesn't matter when you're up there. It doesn't.
Lucas: We've talked to a number of people during this show that have what might be classified as the greatest job in the world. Jessica, you're wearing a shirt that says, “Jack Daniel's Quality Control.” There are probably millions of people that think they would want to do that, but talk through what the quality control process looks like around here and what your day-to-day looks like.
Jessica: Here at Jack, we have two quality control departments. We have a north quality control, which is really where the whiskey is being made. It's dealing with the grains, the water, the unaged whiskey process. Then on the south end we have south quality, which is strictly the aged whiskey. We don't handle the unaged.
I think in quality control in any industry, you find yourself being that jack of all trades, no pun intended, and you really are. We provide a service to many departments.
For example, where I am on the south end, we are running colors and watching the aging with warehousing. With bottling, we're helping support the lines with inequality issues with materials. From processing, we're helping watch the processing of the whiskey and meeting parameters and specifications as it gets ready to hit the bottling line.
Indirectly, we work with scheduling. If there's problems with materials, and we can't put that on the line, they need to know. They need to pull that off the schedule. You work with engineering with continuous improvement. When you're down there producing almost 20 million cases, 19 million cases, one little improvement can make a massive, massive improvement to production and in quality.
So, we wear many hats. In my role as a QC supervisor as well as a packaging engineer, these roles have just kind of rolled up into this title because of what I've been interested in and what I've been involved in.
Day-to-day, I really can't tell you. I can't put on paper where I'm going to start, but it does start with the group, my team. We have ten people in the south lab, and that's running three shifts at least five days a week. Most of the time, six when we hit our packing season.
We also run a single barrel lab. So, I have two labs that I'm watching, mainly because single barrel is its own little caveat to the brand, and it has its own lab. Any given day I'm just supporting my team. I'm supporting the bottling lines. I'm supporting any department.
What's funny is when I'm getting ready in the morning, I'm thinking about, “Okay, I need to check my email and I need to do this, this and this and this.” I most often never get to the third item on my list before I get a phone call, an email or crisis mode. In crisis mode at Jack, I really have to say, “Alright, guys, it's just whiskey. We can handle this. Let’s get our heads together.”
Day in and day out, it's really being that one person, that sound person that somebody can call. Come swing by my office. Shoot me an email. I'm there. I can help support any way I can. If I can't help you, I'm going to find someone that can.
That's my role as that supervisor. Different responsibilities trickle down to the other roles and the specialists, but as you move yourself up to the supervisor and manager roles, it's really that support. It's giving that push to rally that team and keep moving.
Like I said, it's a little bit of everything all kind of wrapped up into one title. So, yeah, you don't really know exactly. Stuff like sensory, tasting and hosting groups that come in, that's fun and I enjoy that because it’s almost like a break from the day-to-day.
Lucas: I was going to say, is that a reminder that, “Oh yeah, we are in the whiskey business,” because everything else is factory work and production?
Jessica: Yes. I mean, when I was working at the stillhouse I was only one of a team of 12. There were only two women in the world at that time making Jack Daniel’s whiskey. It started there. It started with my foot in the door, understanding the gravity of that and how proud I was to be able to call myself a Jack Daniel’s distiller.
Then it moved into quality. There's only ten of us in this department on the south end. There are only ten people that are dealing with the aged whiskey that can wear this on your shirt. I love it, but I don't think about it very often.
But sometimes you just have those moments where you're like, “I am just beat to death. I cannot answer one more question and cannot be in five places at one time today.” You remind yourself, and you're like, “Okay, I can do this.”
My manager, Rosemary Du Bois, is fantastic and she reminds me often that not many people get to wear that label, “Quality Control.”
Lucas: Yeah. Lexie, what about you? What is a rough idea of your day-to-day?
Lexie: Yeah. I was just like her. My day-to-day can change day-to-day very quickly.
We’ll come in and we have a lot of different facets of things we have to monitor throughout the stills, like all the set points on the stills. We’re making sure that's bringing off some quality product going into charcoal mellowing. We're also monitoring all of the vats over in charcoal mellowing. I'm watching the timeframes on those all through fermentation. We’re dropping beers and filling them back up.
This is all happening seven days a week, 365 days a year, holidays, your birthday, everything. We're here making whiskey.
It's a very interesting process, but when I first came into it, I was amazed at just walking around through a 12 hour period, how many numbers you would have in your head: what a temperature is, what time this started dropping, what time we set this one, what the pH is in the bottlings and all the different things you are looking at constantly for a 12-hour period.
We've just recently in the last year took charcoal mellowing over from quality control. It has become a very, very neat thing to see how all the flows work in that and managing where the whiskey is going to be in pre-mellowing and post-mellowing before it goes down to be filled into the barrels.
So, our day-to-day, like I said, can change very quickly because problems do arise.
Lucas: Sure. That's an interesting thought of, for however long that charcoal mellowing was under one department, then moved under a different side of it, how many parts need to be moved around as processes change, as technology changes, and as opportunity changes.
To be there and be involved in the decision making on, “Well, let's move this whole component of the process under another group.” I imagine you guys were involved in those discussions as well and the push and pull of all of that as it went along.
Lexie: Yeah. I think it had been talked about for a little while, and I think a lot of people actually thought we always ran it as the stillhouse, but quality control definitely ran that amazingly for years. We are still learning everything just right, all the little tricks of the trade. It's a pretty neat thing to see. It is.
Lucas: What do you guys think are some of the misconceptions that people might have about women working in the whiskey business?
Lexie: I think people may think that we're actually treated differently, and we’re not.
Jessica: I'll be honest, when I came in to interview, I felt like that was the stigma. It was like, “They're looking at me as a woman, and I need to prove to them that I can hang with the guys.” Mentally, that got me prepared for my interview. I’m confident. It didn't bother me, but it was very intimidating to even know what the work was.
I'll be honest with you, and Lexie I think would agree, when you get into a predominantly male group like the stillhouse, it was not that way. It's like literally the gender thing dropped, and I think that was more me at that time.
For a while training, you don't want to ask for help. You don't want to be the weak one. But I would have guys asking for my help before I ever asked for their help, and you just get to this level playing field where you're comfortable.
This is not a gender thing. This is not a gender role. I think coming in pretty young, the guys were expecting to have to help, or I don’t know if they really knew what to expect.
They work 12-hour shifts. I was working 12-hour shifts, swing shifts, all over the place. It was like two or three in the morning, and we're settling down, talking about what's going on.
We just have great conversations with these teams, and one of the guys admitted, “We didn't know what to expect.” I was like, “What do you mean you didn't know what to expect?” He's like, “We have an older lady working here. We've never really had someone this young.” I'm like, “Well, I hope I exceeded our expectations.” He's like, “Well, we didn't have any expectations, but you definitely exceeded anything I would've put on paper.”
I think at that moment I was like, “Okay, I'm good. I can focus on the work.” The guys that had been there longer than me have so much experience and so much to offer to the table. If you want to sit down and learn something, all you have to do is ask. It's amazing, and that's not just the stillhouse. That's any department you go to that I've been into, if you have that desire to learn and know.
That's kind of what I went into this whole role with at 24. Don't push anything to the side. Learn it, and be involved and engaged. I think that that's probably why I am where I am today. I've just been interested.
Lucas: Yeah. What about you, Lexie?
Lexie: Yes. I will say one thing on the women in whiskey since my grandmother retired from here. When I told her I was going to the stillhouse, she was very troubled by that. She's like, “It is a man's job,” and of course was being a little old fashioned.
That didn't really hurt my feelings. It more pushed me a little harder to be like, “No, I've definitely got this.” Even today I think she's done with me being in the stillhouse, in a man’s job, but she’s still very proud.
She says, “Aren’t you done? Aren’t you ready to go from that hard work?” I think that’s something some people would be surprised at: how hard it is. A lot of the tour groups that come through see us in the glass bubble in there. Almost like a fish tank, they will peck on the windows.
Lucas: Do not disturb the distiller.
Jessica: You can feed us, though.
Lexie: Yeah, but they see us in front of the computer screens mainly. That's a very small percentage of the job. There are days that I could have 40 thousand steps in 30 flights of stairs, and that's not a real bad day. There's so many stairs and it's such a large facility, and I just don't think people can fully see that on the tour.
Even some people we've brought up that haven't been on the tour, people that work here, they don't really know what we do. I wish we could do more of that – just sit in her job for a day and see really everything she does since she’s seen everything we do.
Jessica: Yeah. I was telling Lexie, too, I don't know how many people have worked at the stillhouse and then turned around and have gone to the bottling side. I worked at the stillhouse for a little over three and a half years, and then I did a year stint in north quality on the unaged side. An opportunity came down south for a QC specialist role, and I've been there since 2012.
Literally the first three to four years down there, we were bottling whiskey I had helped make full cycle. I don't know if many people have had that opportunity, but I have great pride in that. I just felt very humbled that I have had that experience because you don't really see a big crossover from north to south because they’re two completely different operations.
You do have more that are bridging that gap. Jeff Arnett’s been one. He's been back and forth. Rosemary Du Bois, my manager, has as well. We've done a few co-op tradeoffs with the north lab where they can bring some people down and spend a stint down there, just cross training and looking at what else is out there.
Lucas: I was gonna say, is there an adversarial relationship sometimes between north and south?
Jessica: It's very cordial, and we really depend on each other a lot. It's the science background that we all have that we have in common, that we are related to, and if I've got a problem, you just bounce ideas off.
There's really no other way to explain it other than you have to leverage the help and the experience of your coworkers and people that are in other departments. They know more than you. They always will.
Lucas: Sure. On the personal side of things, how do you guys enjoy your Jack Daniel’s? What kind of advice would you give women or anybody else really looking to begin enjoying Jack Daniel’s or get into this business, other than having to move to southern middle Tennessee?
Lexie: On how I like my Jack, whiskey, to me, is easy because it's not like you have to add a lot to make it taste good. The flavor’s already there. It kind of depends on what mood you're in or what the weather's like, how I'm going to drink my whiskey. You can drink it neat or on the rocks. I'm a big fan of some filtered water or if I'm feeling fancy, just squeezing a lemon.
In trying to get somebody to like Jack Daniels, start small with a good single barrel proof. It really is amazing. Always measure.
Lucas: You probably need less than you think.
Lexie: Yes, but the flavor is definitely there.
Starting in this job, like we had talked about earlier, you just don't give up. You can do it. I mean, find something you're passionate about and just hold onto that passion. It will get you there. For sure. For sure. Just keep trying.
Jessica: How I treat Jack: if I'm at home, meaning I'm just unwinding, it's usually on the rocks with a splash of water. I spend a lot of time in the south end analyzing and doing sensory on the aged product, so it's kind of just bringing a little bit of work home with you. If I'm out at a club or a restaurant, I'll usually get a cocktail or even mix it with some coke. That makes the night usually last a little bit longer.
But yeah, I like to sit back and appreciate it. It is a complex whiskey. It's amazing. It smells amazing. I love it. If you've ever been in the processing department where they have tanks of it ready to hit the bottling line, you're like, “This is a little bit of heaven in here.” I don't know how else to explain it.
Advice for women, anybody, to get into this industry: I think what you have to keep in mind is that it's not just making the whiskey where the opportunity is. You have so many departments. You have shipping, receiving, warehousing, purchasing, advertising and the visitor center. It doesn't have to just be hands in the product all day. There are many parts to play.
Start with what you're interested in or what you think you're interested in, and don't let anything intimidate you from at least applying and interviewing. You have to start somewhere. This is such an intimidating brand when you think about how it's made and the magnitude of work that goes into one bottle. But you just kind of separate that out.
When you get to where you're ready to dive into something else – even somebody that's already working here, we'll get into a new department. You just start investigating, start learning about it.
Before I ever interviewed here, I was telling a few people. Some older family friends had some advice for interviewing. I mean little old me going into this big company with a bunch of men interviewing me, it's intimidating, but they said, “You go in and you treat everybody like they're your boss, whether it's the guard or someone walking down the hauler. You don't know who they are. You treat them with the utmost respect.”
That was the first thing I was told before I ever stood on the property here. I think when you go into that and have that attitude, people just gravitate toward that. It was such good advice.
Then the other bit of advice was, “Go in and don't ever limit yourself on what you want to learn to do.” People were saying. “I would want to learn every part of it.” I'm like, “That's a really good ambition. It's very ambitious, but that is a very good point.”
Lucas: Well, Lexie, Jessica, thank you for spending a little time with us Around the Barrel and keep making the stuff that goes Around the Barrel.
Lexie: We will.
Jessica: For sure.
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 podcasts and great whiskey, please enjoy responsibly. 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 2019, Jack Daniel’s. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.
