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If you think Bob Dylan’s just-announced whiskey distillery slated to open in Nashville next fall will put Tennessee on the beverage tourism map, you haven’t been paying quite enough attention. Certainly, the iconic singer’s new Heaven’s Door Distillery and Center for the Arts will lure millions of visitors to the already booming southern city with its public tours, 360-seat performance venue, restaurant and whiskey library.
But despite presumably insurmountable competition from bourbon’s spiritual home in next door Kentucky, not to mention Scotland and Ireland, where whiskey originated, Tennessee producers say they made their mark on the map long ago. As home to the oldest and biggest licensed premium liquor producer in America, Tennessee already hosts hundreds of thousands of spirits seekers annually. Each year, Jack Daniel’s, located in the central Tennessee town of Lynchburg, welcomes 280,000 visitors who come from all 50 states and 30 countries every two months. The state’s second largest, George Dickel Tennessee Whisky, draws a crowd to its spirited, full of southern charm mini-campus in Cascade Hollow, and 30 additional (craft) distilleries make for destinations of their own.
Disclosure: I attended a media trip to Dickel in April 2018.
State stakeholders insist, at least publicly, that Tennessee distillers don’t want to compete, either with outsiders or one another. They lavishly praise other whiskey industries and tourism initiatives and say they simply want people to enjoy whiskey attractions in general, with interest in one raising interest in all.
“They’re building our customer base rather than detracting from it,” says Nicole Austin, general manager and distiller for Dickel. “Tennessee distilleries already work really great together. We all know we’re going to succeed or fail as a group. ”
As for Heaven’s Door, she says, “Welcome to the family.”
Whiskey Tourism by the Numbers
With major investments from the public sector, whiskey-tourism assets in traditional whiskey-producing places are rushing to capitalize on the liquid’s manic popularity, and truth be told, when it comes to the numbers, Tennessee is barely cracking open the door. Neighboring Kentucky, which gave widespread rise to bourbon, reportedly set a commonwealth record last year with 1.63 million visitors to distilleries. Ireland, which sees itself in an arms race with Scotland, counted 923,000 visitor center visits in 2018 but Scotland dominates the world scene with 1.9 million distillery visits reported by the Scotch Whisky Association last year.
Geography and Politics – Both a Blessing and a Curse
Tennessee, for those who haven’t consulted a map lately, is long. Really, really long. So it’s not readily feasible to take the whole state on at once.
Further, it has a more twisted history with alcohol than most. It enacted the nation’s first prohibition law, in 1838, and went completely dry in 1909, ten years before federal Prohibition took effect, and its subsequent policies haven’t kept pace with the country. Until laws changed a decade ago, opening a distillery was near impossible. Even now, after a hard-fought win to allow distillery construction and free samples without requiring a local referendum, according to Tennessee Distillers Guild spokesperson Heath Clark, every dry county can decide whether to let its distilleries sell cocktails.
This, too, leads to an inconsistency that can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, with East Tennessee, Nashville and Memphis each offering its own unique culture. Hence, a two-year-old whiskey trail that links Tennessee’s distilleries is generally marketed as a place to visit again and again, rather than all at once.
“There’s a certain amount of regionality to Tennessee,” Austin says. “There’s a wider variety so we have differentiation to offer.”
Beyond the Still
Inarguably, Tennessee also boasts an incredible array of activities.
“In Tennessee we’ve got what I refer to as three cultural cornerstones, music, hospitality, whiskey,” Clark says.
“Dollywood, the Appalachian mountains, Nashville, professional sports teams, music culture, Memphis, including Elvis,” offers Stillhouse distillery founder and CEO Brad Beckerman as a few of many examples.
The Jack Daniel’s Effect
It’s hard to overstate the impact of Jack Daniel’s on Tennessee. Jack Daniel’s distills in accordance with the legal definition of “Tennessee Whiskey,” meaning distillers filter their liquid through charcoal using a technique called the Lincoln County Process. Though most people misclassify it as bourbon, a majority of western drinkers have at least heard of the brand, thanks to its incredible production volume and history of exportation. Heath credits Jack Daniel’s, and Dickel to a lesser extent, for making Tennessee home to 55% of American spirits exports.
Not content to rest on its more-than-150-year-old history, Jack Daniel’s is innovating along with its neighboring craft start-ups. Not only has it launched higher-end single-barrel products to meet premiumization trends, it draws visitors to Lynchburg with a program that invites aficionados to select their own barrel and bottle its contents for home use. On Monday, the company, owned by Kentucky liquor conglomerate Brown-Forman, unveiled an augmented reality app that gives faraway fans a virtual tour.
“Even our legacy brands are responding to modernization,” says Clark. (Ed note: While true, this isn’t unique to Tennessee).
Creativity and Cooperation
At the circa-1878 George Dickel, owned by Diageo, distillers innovate by releasing one-of-a-kind products like George Dickel Tabasco Barrel Finish, which incorporates Louisiana-produced Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce, another southern staple. Within the past year the distillery got permission to sell mixed drinks to visitors, whom they feed and entertain with a restaurant, BBQ truck and live country music concerts throughout the year.
In Columbia, Stillhouse packages whiskey flavors like mint chocolate chip and coconut in containers that resemble oil cans and releases some of its wacky combinations exclusively at its speakeasy-style in-house bar.
“Fun connects people with that visceral experience, that smile,” says Beckerman. “It’s memorable; it’s got attitude,” he says of his product but could also be describing the Tennessee whiskey scene overall.
Guild members support one another’s endeavors and share knowledge as needed, sometimes through formal channels like the guild’s mentorship program that pairs distillers to work on processes like sanitation, proofing and barreling. Sometimes, the mentorship arrives more casually but no less impactfully.
“It’s pretty neat when the master distiller from Jack Daniel’s calls to ask if he can help you,” says Clark, who owns H Clark Distilling in Thompson’s Station. “We put down a barrel a week, Jack’s putting down 2,400 a day. Yet they care enough about the legacy of state to make sure the state’s gain is for everyone.”
A Maturing Market
Remember those antiquated laws Tennessee proved slow to update ten years ago? They could actually help distillers now, as liquid they started aging when they opened a decade ago turns ten and gets ready to debut as higher-end brown spirit. That’s in addition to the younger stuff that’s also readying itself to come out of the barrel.
Some of the distilleries that have been sourcing grain neutral spirits externally are “starting to get into their own make,” Clark says. “So the next three, four, five years are going to be a very exciting time as that starts hitting the market.”
