Around the Barrel Ep057/Re056 - Melvin Keebler and Donna Willis 

 

Lucas Hendrickson: As much as tradition is a component of what comes out of the Jack Daniel distillery. The motto, "Every day we make it, we'll make it the best we can", absolutely encompasses using new tools as they become available. 

 

On this episode, we talk with Melvin Keebler and Donna Willis, two key leaders on the distilleries operations team about new technology the company is using to continue its sustainability climb, about how opportunities for changing processes can still benefit longtime partners who've been comfortable with the way things currently are, and about how the wide world of whiskey needs geeks of all kinds 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.

 

Melvin Keebler: Well, I'm Melvin Keebler. I'm the senior vice president and general manager of Jack Daniel supply chain. That includes responsibilities for all the operations and the home place in Lynchburg at the distillery. Also have responsibility for a barrel cooperage operation in Trinity, Alabama, called Jack Daniels Cooperage and a barrel cooperage operation, Brown-Forman Cooperage, in Louisville, Kentucky. I grew up in Selma, Alabama, and I relocated to Tennessee when I started work at Jack Daniel's and now I currently live in north Alabama.

 

Donna Willis: I'm Donna Willis, director of technical services, maintenance and barrel distribution. I have responsibilities for what I would say the support of our full operations here at Jack, so I always say if it needs to be built, modified, expanded, made more efficient, I'm usually have the support team that helps keep us up and running. I am originally from Kentucky, about an hour south of Louisville, and relocated to Lynchburg a couple of years ago.

 

Lucas: Melvin, Donna, welcome to Around the Barrel.

 

Melvin: It's good to be here.

 

Lucas: I was going to say good to be back for you. You spoke with us a couple years ago about a number of different items, not the least of which being your, at that point, Tennessee Tasters series offering, which I still have a little bit of back of the house and enjoy on occasion responsibly, obviously. Donna, you're with us for the first time. Welcome in.

 

We've talked in the past a little bit on this show about some of the sustainability programs and processes that go on around the grounds, mainly kind of in the home place areas stuff, but obviously whiskey making is a business that relies on natural, renewable materials as a key part of all of those processes between grain and water and wood and all the things that go into making this world-class liquid.

 

You guys kind of have the day-to-day responsibility of monitoring each of those things even before they make it onto the grounds here in Lynchburg. Talk a little bit about what those efforts look like these days. Obviously, we've been through a lot the last few years, supply chain issues and things that can impact these components. Talk about where we are as far as these things and then we've got a lot of interesting new things on the horizon as far as distillery operations as relates to sustainability.

 

Melvin: I'll start off and I'll just kind of walk us through a high level throughout the Jack Daniel's, I'm going to say the forest to the finished good case. We use sustainable practices and partner with the loggers from where we source our logs. We look at how they get to the mills and then we optimize the use of the logs in our mills and in our cooperages. We've invested in a lot of technology around optimizing and make sure we getting the maximum use out of it and it's from a sustainability standpoint and also some financial incentives. We use the same practices in our grain. We've optimized the fermentation processes over the years and able to significantly reduce the water in the fermentation process and therefore reduce the energy required through process and actually make the whiskey. We have been zero waste to landfill for probably over a decade.

 

I mean we got that through an aggressive recycling program, even had a dumpster dive where we went through with our employees, picked out, sorted out, where the waste was coming from and was able to optimize it. On our barrel program, a hundred percent reuse. It's either goes into supporting other people in the distill spirits industry – scotch, Irish whiskey, rums. We also use them in creating furniture and in use in our home place operations. The biggest use obviously is in the reuse in the distilled spirits industry, but every barrel that comes in here that we use for making Tennessee whiskey, we find the home for it.

 

We just recently celebrated a partnership with the University of Tennessee on the tree improvement program. We started working with UTIA, University of Tennessee Agricultural Department. We started working with them 25 years ago on what we call a tree farm and the purpose of the farm was to A, let's study the area from an inventory of sugar maple. We expanded it to 10 other species, one of them being white oak, which is the component–

 

Lucas: Very important.

 

Melvin Keebler: But sugar maple inventory was obviously critical in our charcoal mellowing process. So, we started that partnership with those first two species, did a lot of study around and decided, hey, the best thing to do is create a tree farm. We donated about 30 acres and through the research at the University of Tennessee, it is creating a species of trees that would survive best in the state of Tennessee, either through selecting locally the best performing trees, maybe even some grafting and genetic modifications. It's been very successful. So, that tree farm now is producing acorns that are then sent to nurseries and grow seedlings. Those seedlings are then used to populate the state of Tennessee with some very great performing hardwood tree species.

 

Lucas: Now, if you could just figure out how to grow the barrels themselves. No, the folks in Trinity do fantastic work down there, but if they can just get it close to being staves when they start, that probably would make some people happy. I don't know. We'll see. Donna, talk about what your experience has been with the company you were working with Brown-Forman previously, correct.

 

Donna: Yes.

 

Lucas: And then moved here to Lynchburg a couple years ago to help whip this place into shape alongside Melvin and some others.

 

Donna: Get to work with great people on the daily. So, that's always nice.

 

So, I've been with the company about 20 years, actually started as an intern and actually worked with Melvin while I was in research and development. So, I started on the research side of our company and fell in love with operations and moved to that side probably about four years into my career here. So, I've spent a lot of time in Kentucky working at most of our facilities, the distillery specifically. And so for me, as Melvin was talking through the tree improvement piece, I was very closely connected through the Dendrifund, specifically with Barbara Hurt to talk about the White Oak initiative and analyzing the properties that I had responsibility for to say, "Hey, could we do some of the great work that Melvin and the team have done here and start some of that work in Kentucky?"

 

So, it's great to see that they are now planting, I think in Louisville now, and I think they're still analyzing Woodford. But since I have been here, what I would say is our reach for sustainability is broad and wide, so we don't really take anything off the table. We have an internal sustainability committee that's really driven by our leaders inside of the organization. Melvin and I sit on it, along with a lot of our other directors and managers, and we analyze everything from how we manage our incoming inventory through how our operations and efficiency work from water reuse, from steam and heat recovery, and then also what do we do with our backend byproducts. So, how do we take those and make sure that we're getting beneficial reuse out of those as well. So, that committee has been really important and it's really driven a lot of the work that we're now starting to have come to fruition for our organization.

 

Lucas: Right. And we'll get into the idea of an anaerobic digester here. We'll get in some terms that the layman may or may not understand the words to start with, but certainly the science and stuff behind it is fascinating.

 

What are the things that have emerged over the past decade or so, though, that have really kind of driven a lot of these sustainability opportunities forward? Obviously responsibility for the supply chain and the products themselves, but certainly I've got to imagine a lot of technology and a lot of improvement of process has moved a lot of that's stuff along quickly as well.

 

Melvin: I think the advancement in renewable energies and how we process spent grains and I think the advancement in solar technology has been a key driver in our approach to the growth of and expanding the distillery operation. So, 10 years ago, the technology that we're going to discuss a little bit later on, we talking about solar-powered and looking at compressed natural gas for vehicle fleets or battery powered vehicles. It was just getting started and now it's to the point, not only from a sustainability, but from a financial analysis, it makes great sense to do these things. So, I think that's probably been some of the key drivers in our pursuit to be even more sustainable. It's just advance in renewable energies and how we look at spent stillage to byproducts and just ways that we can become greener and still be competitive in some cases better than the traditional sources of energy.

 

Donna: And I think the people inside of the organization are a huge part of it. There's a lot of passion and growth. There's fourth and fifth generation employees and one of the campaigns that we run internally is "One Jack Daniel, One Earth." So, we challenge them, "Hey, we've been around for 160 plus years. We want to continue to be here, so how do we protect our natural resources to make sure that we can stay and we're not having a negative impact on the company?" And I mean, you see that people carry that passion with them from the ground up. They really do.

 

Lucas: Melvin, you were talking before about, and it kind of triggered this thought in my head, about water conservation. You talk about a lot of other distilled spirits producers around the world that maybe have multiple locations in which they're doing their work. There's only one Jack Daniel's, there's only one Cave Spring, there's only one of that water source. Where did you find the biggest cost and process savings for water in working with the distillation process? What was being lost before that you're able to recapture these days?

 

 

Melvin: It's probably a combination of several things. Within the process itself is how we have optimized the fermentation, and then within there there's a significant amount of water being used for controlling the temperatures and then we do stuff like heat recovery. So, there's steam production and then there's cooling water, and then there's water that actually, which is the cave water, which actually goes into the process. So, we look at it as a combination of all of this. First you optimize the amount of water you use in the process. So, that's the cave water. We've also done some things like purchase land that could affect the cave water. We call it like the recharge basin. So, we purposely went out there, found out all these places, and then acquired that land to protect that source of water. And then we want to optimize the use.

 

And then it's the things that we use where the steam water, cooling water, that we want to optimize either heat recovery, meaning, "Hey, if I am getting condensate from steam production and that's essentially warm or hot water, how can I reuse that energy, such that I don't have to use some form of energy creating heat?" in its simplest. So, that's essentially heat recovery using some energy that you've already put into a stream to heat up so you don't have to then use additional energy and then you can optimize it just by efficiencies in your condensers and your heat exchangers and growing efficiencies in your boilers. But all of that, we look at it as a combination of several things with our approach to water conservation.

 

And then on the south side, where we go through a process, there's water used down there. When we're getting the right concentration of alcohol, we have a process called reverse osmosis and then the rejected water. So, essentially industrial water comes in to the reverse osmosis systems, it purifies it for use in the whiskey and a percent of that gets rejected. Before we were discharging that to a waste treatment facility, now we're actually reusing that water in our fire water loop. So, a significant, so it is a constant, "Where can we reuse water? Where can we reduce the consumption of water, whether it is steam cooling water or cave water?"

 

Lucas: Obviously another significant portion of that production process, the distillation process is the grains used and obviously what happens to that grain after it's done doing its magic on the front end of that. I mentioned that phrase before, anaerobic digester. That's a big part of what the future of the use of that spent grain is going to be. Donna, talk a little bit about what that is, what the past has been with the usage of that grain and then what you're going to take and use it for moving forward.

 

Donna: So, I would say Brown-Forman's been looking at anaerobic digestion for at least 20 years, if not longer.

 

Lucas: Define that for us quickly though. What does that process and its outcome look like for?

 

Donna: So, an anaerobic digester will receive in our whole stillage. So, as we go through the distillation process, we drive off the alcohol that we then use and barrel and the remaining spent grain and water is then sent to our byproducts area. Historically, you have leveraged that area for what we call dry animal feed. So, DDGs or we call our feeder cow program where farmers will come pick up the stillage and they'll use that as a feed source for their cattle herds. As we continue to look at how fast we're growing and how much of an impact we could have to the local environment, we wanted to make sure that we had a sustainable way to continue to grow but not negatively impact the water resources or just the whole ecological system. And so AD has been something we've been looking at for a number of years from a research side to say, "Has the technology advanced enough that it's ready for us to use?"

 

And so what anaerobic digestion does is it takes that stillage and then through a digestion process creates natural gas and then that natural gas then gets cleaned up and injected back into a pipeline as renewable natural gas, because it's coming from a natural source already. And then the remainder, we call it fertilizer, some people call it digestate. It then still has nutrient-rich properties that can be used in different ways. And so what we're looking at right now is can you take that fertilizer, which is now a very natural resource and really apply it back to the fields for the farmers that are growing our corn and our grains.

 

Lucas: But the process that has been in place for a long time around here had a lot of different kind of prongs to it from, again, wholegrain whole grain and then also a liquified version of that. Correct?

 

Donna: Yeah.

 

Lucas: And there was some conversation that happened around that when the plans were initially announced, and it seems like if you go and look at the stories that came out of from that. The company did do a little bit of a pivot to continue that relationship with the farmers in the area, which again, very important to the community itself and also will benefit both parties in the long run. So, talk about what that's going to look like for those farmers moving forward once this new digestion system gets up and running fully. And what's the timeframe on that being fully online?

 

Donna: For the AD the plans are right now that they will start the digester, bringing them online, I'm going to say January of 2024, and that typically is anywhere from a 20 to 30 day process to get the digesters running efficiently. And so we have built in with our partnership with Three Rivers Energy, we've built in a six-month ramp up period. And so over that six months, it gives them the time that they need to bring multiple digesters online, but it also allows us to kind of pivot internally in how we manage that. Once they're fully online, we will still have the farmer base that we were talking about. So, the wet spillage that goes out to the farmers, we'll have a portion of it still in dried grains and then we'll have a portion of it that goes to this renewable energy piece.

 

Melvin: Our commitment to the community and our relationship with the community, it is one of my top priorities. And when we announced a different way to process spent stillage, a lot of the farmers, that's a big part of their livelihood is the feeder cattle program. At the time, roughly about 50% of our spent stillage was going to these farmers. If we look at the cattle density in Moore County and our expected growth, it was not sustainable. We could just not rely on them to continue to take 50% of the spent stillage. That was one calculation. This just not going to work.

 

Lucas: And you were still going to need to find someplace else to put that obviously.

 

Melvin: Yeah. So, we are growing. They're taking about 50% of the volume of where we are today. And then if I say, "Hey, I'm going to increase the distillery capacity by 50%," then where am I going to do with the rest?

 

Lucas: Yeah, that number times 25%. There's a lot of moving targets there.

 

Melvin: So, then the choices are use a energy intensive process of converting this to distillers dried grains or, as Donna mentioned earlier, go back through and look at this anaerobic digestive technology, which we had been vetting and trying to find the right partnership for more than two decades.

 

Lucas: Oh, wow. Okay.

 

Melvin: We found the right partner in Three Rivers. The technology had advanced. So, what was the next challenge was, okay, now that we have a truly sustainable method for processing this, how can we maintain that great relationship with the farmers?

 

We did have to, I would say, pivot some and pivot was we still want to support the community. The digester is going to be fully capable of handling, as they build out, 70, 80 and as they grow even a hundred percent. But with that in mind, I think we struck a great balance when we said, "Hey, this is our commitment to Three Rivers, which is the company that we partnered with to build the anaerobic digester. We are going to establish a minimum commitment to them, and then the rest of the stillage we can still use to support the farmers." And so that was a great balance.

 

I think some of the other work that Donna and her team came out is in addition to the anaerobic digester converting this to renewable natural gas, there's a lot of other benefits in the spent stillage, and one of the other things that we start looking at is, hey, is there opportunities around biodiesel? And so we actually through our kind of research on anaerobic digesters and everything other people are doing in the industry regarding spent stillage. Donna Willis and her team came up with this great technology called corn oil, and I'll let her talk to that a little bit.

 

Donna: Yeah. So, what we are in the process of investing on and hopefully bringing online later this fall is a corn oil recovery system. So, of the stillage that we are keeping in house to either process and to dry distiller's grain or to offer out to the community we are, as part of our evaporation process, bringing in a separate system that will actually remove the corn oil from our stillage.

 

Lucas: Okay.

 

Donna: And that corn oil is a key ingredient for biodiesel. And so as we look to how can we continue to help what I would say renewable fuel sector now this corn oil then be sold directly into biodiesel plants and be a raw material for them as well.

 

Lucas: Okay, interesting.

 

Donna: And so it's common in the fuel side, and that's really where we started to look at in the fuel ethanol side, say, "Hey, is there some of this technology now that we're large enough that we can start to look to implement?"

 

Lucas: Pivoting back to the AD system though, and again, the natural gas that becomes an output of that. What kind of things are you having to change or adapt or add to the operations that are going to be able to use that natural gas as part of – what does that future look like?

 

Donna: So, the beautiful thing about the AD is that as Three Rivers brings it online, it will be able to supply 100% of the natural gas, based on the size of Jack Daniel's today. And so as we continue to grow and the community continues to grow, we'll be able to then work with them on is there future expansion and how do we continue to bring all of that renewable natural gas back into the local community and the plant to be able to support our operations.

 

Lucas: So, it won't be just necessarily, especially as they all come online, it won't just be for distillery operations. You will be able to fold that into Lynchburg proper. That's fantastic, especially as the things that are in the plans for the growth and expansion of the distillery itself.

 

Melvin: The great thing about renewable natural gas and this process is once the microorganism process to spent stillage into producing methane and then that is refined and processed by Three Rivers, it has the same specification, or quality specification, as the existing natural gas, so people won't have to do anything to their gas stoves or we don't have to do anything at the distillery. It actually goes into the same pipeline, the same natural gas pipeline that we're currently using and Lynchburg is currently using should see no impact whatsoever. It will be virtually or it will be identical to what they are currently using.

 

Lucas: That's fantastic. Again, in this kind of overall talk about renewable energy and certainly the transportation world, what is the distillery looking at as far as use of electric vehicles either on site or as part of fleet operations, things like that. What are the renewable pieces that can go into that for the transportation side of things?

 

Donna: So, we've been evaluating a number of things. So, at first we were looking heavily at electric. How can we leverage electric vehicles and test them, because we want to test and learn what is the right thing for our facility. At the same time, this partnership with Three Rivers for us unlocked kind of a second thing for us to look at in terms of compressed natural gas because we know the natural gas is coming from a renewable source. And so now we are at that phase where we're really identifying where we're wanting to test and go electric first.

 

And so for us, the first phase is looking at our tractors and our yard dogs. Let's test electric. Let's test CNG. What's the best way for us to go? How does that support our business? Then the next phase is going to be looking at our barrel trucks. Commercial, our passenger fleet, is a little bit easier for us to dive into. And so it's really, I think, going to be a delicate balance of where we go electric, is it all of it, or is it a partnership between electric and our compressed natural gas because of some of the other resources we have in the area?

 

Melvin: What I like most about our approach to vehicles and our entire approach to sustainability is we look at all the available technologies out there. We vet them for what we think works best for us. About two years ago, we announced a significant partnership with Tennessee Valley Authority, and it was part of their, what they called the TVA Green Invest program. They had, TVA, partnered with Silicon Ranch to build a 200 megawatt solar farm in Moore County. We reached out to them and said, "We want to be a part of this."

 

Lucas: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

 

Melvin: So, through that effort, 75% of the distillery's electricity will be from renewable electricity coming from the solar power project. So, naturally, if you already got the infrastructure in place for electricity, our first thing was, "Let's look at what it would take to convert our fleet over to battery powered vehicles."

 

And we still look at that technology. We still think it's a potential, but then with the anaerobic digester and the renewable natural gas coming online, that just seems to be a better, more natural approach to us. And we take it as some of it is a replacement, in other words. And then some of it is, as Donna mentioned earlier, some of it is, "Hey, let's purchase one and let's try it." So, that is our approach, both compressed natural gas from the renewable gas from the anaerobic digester, and some vehicles will be EV and that electricity is coming from the solar farm.

 

Lucas: What an amazing time to be able to have that wealth of choices in the midst of all of this. Again, 10, 15 years ago, this stuff was just still kind of bubbling up and maybe just wasn't going to be efficient enough to make some mass changes to what you want to do operationally or transportationally, that kind of thing. But you guys got a lot of options right now that are very, very cool.

 

Donna: We do, and the technology is changing so fast that we're trying to stay close to it and we'll continue to evaluate and reevaluate kind of what that delicate balance needs to be for us.

 

Lucas: Sure.

 

Melvin: It's constant ongoing efforts, too. So, we talk a lot about the anaerobic digester, we talk about the partnership with TVA, the solar farm. There are other work that's going on at the distillery, and I'll give an example. On our palletized warehouses as part of the freeze protection, they have boilers associated with them, fossil fuel boilers that once the outside temperature drops to a certain point, they come on to maintain a certain temperature to prevent the fire water pipe and sprinkler system from freezing. And we thought, "Wow, what if we, now that we have this partnership with TVA and it's electricity from the solar farm, what if we could instead of using boilers in that, convert that to a heat pump or electrical heat source?"

 

Lucas: And there's more water savings right there.

 

Melvin: And there's more water savings right there. So, those are the things that probably we do behind the scenes that don't quite grab the headlines of a big anaerobic digester, but I think it's an important part of the sustainability story, meaning we look at all aspects of the operations, the big ones, and we take some small wins also.

 

Lucas: Well, and again, I think what people probably don't recognize until there's a problem, again, fire suppression systems within all of these warehouses on site is a key component to all of that. So, where the water savings is good, making sure the whiskey don't go up, that's even better. So, having that be something that you continually, there are likely businesses out there that go set it and forget it once they got it locked in, then if it ain't broke, don't break it kind of thing. But that's fascinating to me that you guys are continuing kind of looking at where can we improve the process. It's that, "Every day we make, we'll make it the best we can."

 

Donna: It's the innovative approach.

 

Lucas: So, that consistent innovation lens that not only is what Chris and Lexie and those folks are doing with the liquid itself, but also the continual improvement of those processes. What are the things that kind of excite you individually the most as far as what's been the thing that's been oh, the big aha moment? And obviously the AD project is big and looming large in everybody's windshield, but there's all these little things that come up that probably get you excited as well.

 

Donna: Ooh, that's a hard one. I mean, because there are so many. For me, I actually have a certification in environmental engineering in addition to my chemical engineering degree. So, for me, it's exciting to see all of the things that we're doing and that it's not just concentrated to one area. So, you talk about the AD, you talk about the solar farm, but we have partnerships with a company called Armstrong to look at heat recovery systems in our boilers. As we expand the distillery, we have to have more boiler capacity and steam capacity. So, how do we do that? But I think where it has the biggest impact is how the technology and the operations group really grab a hold of it and say, "Okay, where can we apply to test it? And once we test it, where else can we apply it?" And the heat pumps is what Melvin talked about is huge because it has completely changed how we look at that warehousing structure. So, it's a lot of the little pieces for me, I think that add up.

 

Lucas: And at the same time, I think it might be important to reiterate that, that approach isn't doing anything to the liquid itself.

 

Donna: Not at all.

 

Lucas: It's going through-

 

Donna: It's preserving the integrity.

 

Lucas: Exactly. It's going through the exact same process that it has naturally for 160 plus years. Just it's that backstopping of those processes that are important to the overall integrity of the liquid itself. So, that's fascinating to me.

 

Melvin, what about you? What kind of excites you about either little pieces of technology or what's kind of looming on the horizon as far as expansion plans and things of that nature?

 

Melvin: The big wins like the solar farm and the anaerobic digester, obviously those are important. I think what excites me is the workforce embracing our sustainability efforts. It's not Melvin and Donna because it's too big for us.

 

Lucas: Absolutely.

 

Melvin: When we talk about zero waste to landfill, that has to be an entire site approach. And so what really gets me excited is everyone here at Jack Daniel's is invested in protecting the environment. And so we can talk about the big things, but there are so many people that every day they come in here, when they say they want to make it the best they can, they want to make it in a sustainable way, and they want to protect their community as much as we do. So, it is probably that makes me most proud.

 

Lucas: Yeah, it is definitely a culture thing. You know, have to get buy-in from every person along the way. And then that certainly bleeds over into what visitors to the home place and throughout the city see as well. So, it is a little bit of that. Once you get that buy-in, then it does filter out to the rest of the community itself. What's it been like for both of you to see the growth of the product itself as it's increased availability throughout the world?

 

Donna: So, for me, it's exciting. It's fun to be on the ground and help design some of this stuff with our teams, to look at how do we maintain it, how do we make it efficient? How do we utilize our resources effectively? It's also really cool to see the innovation that's rolling out through Chris and Lexie and the team there, because that not only is tapping into the market that we've had, but it's bringing new consumers online. And so as we do that, for us continues to drive the need to make sure that we can support it. And from my side of the business and with the teams that I support, we support the operation. And so we're really there to say, "Okay, what do you guys need? How do we help it? How do we make it better?" And so I think that just kind of drives for me the wheels to keep moving to say, "Okay, what's next? What's the next big thing we need to look at?"

 

Melvin: Bottom line, as engineers, we love building stuff.

 

Donna: We're geeks.

 

Melvin: We love building stuff, but just being able to embrace some of the new tech technology in building for the future, that's extremely exciting. Jack Daniel's is one of the most iconic brands in the world, and it's hard for me to impart to the audience the pride that the Lynchburg community takes in making Jack Daniel's. I mean, people love to talk about the fact that they work at Jack Daniel's, and so I don't know how you could get that type of enthusiasm and engagement, but for the fact that they have been doing it for four or five and sometimes six generations, and it's just passed down to one to the other. So, it's exciting to see the growth. Very exciting for the community.

 

Donna: Yeah. They rise to the challenge. I mean, the whole team does.

 

Lucas: And in wrapping up, I mean, I think we know Melvin prefers his Jack with a little Jamaican allspice wood as part of that, as we talked about with Tennessee Tasters a couple years ago. Donna, do you have a preferred Jack cocktail or prefer it neat?

 

Donna: Honestly, so my family's very outdoorsy, so when we're out camping and doing things, it's usually Jack with ginger ale and a lime.

 

Lucas: There you go.

 

Donna: That's my go-to.

 

Lucas: I'm right there with you. So, that's my perfect one as well.

 

Melvin: I would hate for us not to mention some of the great innovation products also that's come out.

 

Donna: The 12 year's amazing.

 

Melvin: The 10-year-old, the 12-year-old.

 

Donna: Yes, both of them.

 

Melvin: Yes. I think in addition to building for the growth, there's been a resurgence in, I would say, the perspective of Jack Daniel's truly being a craft whiskey maker. And some of the products out there are winning awards, several awards. And so that's another thing that we're most proud of. I think Chris Fletcher, our master distiller, and entire innovation team, they have tasked us with making the best whiskey out there. And it tells, because it's gold medal awards, it's platinum awards, and I personally think Jack Daniel's Black Label, it's one of the best things you can get. And it's just nice that we're getting the recognition through some of these other brands.

 

Lucas: And again, that's been the fun thing to kind of chart across the five years we've been doing this show is just the ways that the brand has expanded and also the way you all have, everyone has adopted the varying opportunities to, again, "Every day we make it, we'll make it the best we can," and improve those processes as they move along. It's fascinating for geeks like me to hear about and see and how these things then make it onto store shelves and into the hands, the palates and the collections of a lot of friends of Mr. Jack as well.

 

Donna: Yeah, the culture, I don't think people get to see all that much, but it's such an important part of what we do, and it's such an important part of what makes Jack great.

 

Lucas: Melvin, Donna, again, thanks for joining us Around the Barrel.

 

Donna: Thank you.

 

Melvin: Thank you.

 

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 Daniels and Old Number Seven are registered trademarks. Copyright 2023, 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.