My Road Trip from Annapolis to Ausin (part 2)

Wednesday

Once we got up Wednesday morning we set out for the town of Lynchburg which is about and hour and fifteen minutes south of Nashville. Home of the Jack Daniel's distillery. I have always enjoyed Old No. 7, but I am so much more of a fan after this visit. If you are ever in Tennessee go take this tour, whether you like whiskey or not. It was fascinating and it is a beautiful drive getting there and it is in a beautiful part of the state. This is the one and only place that Jack Daniel's is made or was ever made. The tour is free and they are very proud of their product. The tour starts with a short film about the man, his discovery of the spring water still used today and the birth of the company. Strangely enough Lynchburg is in a dry county, so you have to drive quite a ways before you can actually sample anything made there. They show you ricks of wood (half of a cord) that they burn in order to make the charcoal used in the mellowing process. They take you to the mouth of the cave where the spring water still flows and is still used to make JD. They take you through the distillery building where they ferment the mash (oats, barley and corn), evaporate the alcohol and then condense it to collect clear whiskey. They have a spigot that when it is on pours a 3 inch stream of whiskey that flows at 44 gallons per minute to be collected and send to the next phase. We got to stick our heads in and smell the mash at the top of a silo and it was a burn like horseradish going up your nostrils. A fine smell, but STRONG. Next they trickle the whiskey through large vats of charcoal to mellow it. The charcoal serves to filter out any impurities and we got to take a whiff of those vats too. I think I actually got a little drunk off of those fumes. Next they took us to the building where the barrels are raised (by hand). This is an art form and requires special craftsmen. They do not "make" a barrel, they "raise" them. Then the whiskey goes into the barrel for several years, where it picks up its color and additional flavors from the wood. There is no set time limit. A master distiller tastes each barrel to determine when it is ready to be bottled and he handpicks special ones for the JD premium lines, particularly the Single Barrel Jack. If you happen to have $10,000 you can buy one of these barrels. You get to visit and taste several and pick the one you want. One barrel fills about 44 cases or 264 bottles of whiskey. So if you are looking for gift ideas for me....

Lastly, they take you to the barrel house. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside of any of the buildings, but it was a site to see. Imagine the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with barrels of whiskey and you'll have some idea what it was like to walk through that. All just sitting, aging and picking up color and flavor until the master distiller deems it worthy of the Jack Daniel's label.

Our tour guide Roger was a great guy and he seemed to like Andy and I, chatting us up as we walked from one site to the next.

Not only don't they charge you for the tour, they don't even have a gift shop. They let the local folks take care of that and they point you to downtown to support the local economy. We went to an ice cream parlour and I had Jack Daniel's Whiskey Raisin Ice Cream on a sugar cone. It was amazing. We checked out the tshirts and other souvenirs and I was about to leave without anything when I spotted the perfect memento of this visit. I bought a walking cane that is made from the stave of a used barrel that JD was aged in.
We headed back to Nashville and after a short rest in the hotel headed downtown for dinner and to drink some good ole Tennessee sipping whiskey. There was a concert in the arena right in the center of town and wouldn't you know it Bieber fever was taking over Nashville. Tween girls and their moms squealing everywhere. It was a bit frightening. We ducked into Legends and had a Jack Daniel's while deciding where to eat. We agreed that Jack's was so good the night before that we went back second time. We went back to Rippy's too and saw another really good local act. We decided to grab a shuttle back and make it an early night before the Bieber fans came out and took over the city again.

Thursday

We headed straight to the Ryman Auditorium on Thursday morning. The Ryman is the most famous stage in Nashville and for years was the home to the Grand Ole Opry. The Opry is there twice a week currently while they are repairing Opryland from the flooding. The Ryman was not affected at all. It is a beautiful theatre full of wooden pews and stained glass with acoustics that they claim are second only to Carnegie Hall. We took a guided tour of backstage and a self guided tour of the public spaces. You could get on stage and have your photo taken and they had guitars there for props. Andy and I headed over to do it and I said to him - "I don't care if its three bars...I'm gonna sing on that stage when I get up there to have my picture taken." The lady taking the photos over heard me and said "Honey, you just go right ahead and sing all you want." So Andy and I had our picture taken together and were pleased to find the guitars were tuned and ready to play. So we played a little and then I stayed up to have a picture by myself taken. I played and sang a little bit of a song that I wrote recently and a woman in the balcony gave me a standing ovation. It was a major highlight of the trip. We were both giddy for the next few hours.
We jumped in the car and headed for Memphis....