Water for Drinking and Water for Proofing

Cooling off is important for you, me, and the whiskey we drink.

I spent most of this week sweating my way around Lynchburg, TN with the Jack Daniel’s folks, and between the hydration breaks and the heat naps, I got to pal around with master distiller Chris Fletcher.

Fletcher is new-ish to the role, having taken over for Jeff Arnett not quite a year ago. But to call him new to Jack would be wrong. He grew up at the distillery, where his grandfather once held the same job, and where he worked as a tour guide in his teens.

Every tour of JD goes past the cave spring (above) the source of the distillery’s limestone-fed fresh water. But while water was the primary value of the cave, the second seems just important in July: cool air.

Even standing next to the cave can drop temperatures by 30 degrees, which , turns out, is the reason Mr. Daniel himself constructed his office just a few yards from the cave’s mouth. They didn’t have A/C back then, but a quick stroll down to the cave would be enough to cool you off on the hottest day. Needless to say, it’s a favorite part of the tour.

Hope you’re enjoying the newsletter. If you like this week’s edition please consider sharing/forwarding to friends, and if you’re coming across it for the first time yourself, subscriptions help me out.

Either way, thanks for reading!

Kentucky Should Be Checking Out Glenfiddich’s Whisky-Powered Cars

Glenfiddich did something exciting this week without having to put it in a tri-corner bottle. The Scottish distillery is using waste from the whisky-making process to create biogas, which they’re then capturing to fuel trucks used to move product from distillery to bottling facilities and the like.

Whisky-making waste typically consists of a slurry of spent grains, kind of like an oatmeal. It’s often offered to farmers to feed livestock, but this could be a more efficient way of converting grain to something immediately useful—without spending more resources to transport it elsewhere.

Glenfiddich says it reduces carbon emissions by over 95 percent, and will remove roughly 250 tons of carbon dioxide from their production process annually. The goal is to be net zero by 2040.

It’s a great option for Kentucky to look at during a symposium later this year to deal with the state’s massive whiskey byproduct output. The state has seen its number of distilleries increase by 250 percent in the last decade, and number doesn’t account for the increased production at existing distilleries.

Whiskey Wash ran a great piece this week about green movements in European distilleries, and what going green in the whiskey world really means. Hint: it’s not just about the distillery.

The Start of the Mail-Order Whiskey Rebellion?

The National Review weighed in this week on the direct-to-consumer movement and mail order liquor, calling for changes to “convoluted” and “frustrating” legal issues. As you might suspect, much of this has to do with lingering issues from Prohibition, when dry states worked tirelessly to impede the flow of the devil’s drink across their borders.

Control states, decades later, are struggling with control. North Carolina is in the throes of liquor shortages, while Utah just posted record sales numbers due to the pandemic. There’s a lot of pending legislation to change some of these arcane laws, but regardless of your political leanings, I think you’ll agree that congressional competency is not a good place to allocate much faith right now.

The Complicated Process of Proofing Whiskey

Another great Michael Veach piece worth reading this week. Most drinkers (myself included) assume that there are two ways to proof whiskey: bottling straight from the barrel at cask or barrel strength, or adding water to bring it down to the intended “proof point.” Not so.

Proofing isn’t just dumping the right amount of water into a tank, and Veach lays out some of the nerdy intricacies that most of us overlook. you can even increase the proof of a whiskey before bottling—a process snickeringly called “cold fingering” by those of us with adolescent senses of humors.

Proof is also an exciting area for innovation these days. Paul Hletko of Few Spirits has been replacing proofing water with tea, for instance, in his Immortal Rye. It makes for some really delicious sipping.

Stupid has a Delta Variant, Too

An Orange County restaurant (which has been outspokenly against vaccines, regulations, and anything else related to Covid) posted a sign this week saying they’re only serving unvaccinated people. The reasoning? Some rambling, incoherent drivel about standing up to government tyranny.

Records show, meanwhile, they took roughly $60,000 in PPP loans. The owner, who could use a tailor and a reminder that The Sopranos has been off the air since 2007, went on CNN and was promptly called an idiot by Chris Cuomo.

How you enforce a “no vaccinated people” rule is beyond me, but I’m sure they will have their top scientific minds working on that, right after they finish the day’s lessons on shapes and colors.

Invest in a Cask of Macallan? Maybe

Bonhams is auctioning an entire cask of 30-year-old Macallan in a few weeks. It was distilled in December of 1991, and predictions put its value around $400,000. There are plenty of indications it will set a new record (and far exceed that $400,000 estimate.

But Macallan is a rare, insulated brand in the whiskey collecting world, and this is a good time to remind people of the dangers, pitfalls, and concerns of using whiskey as an investment asset. The stuff, after all, is meant for drinking.

Dessert Flight

1. Uncle Nearest is growing its footprint in Tennessee. The distillery just bought an additional 50-some acres of land to expand the distillery. For context, the Jack Daniel’s distillery footprint is about 200 acres. Most distilleries do this to protect their water sources from industrial damage—if you’ve got a mountain spring, you don’t want someone messing with the land above it.

2. Manhattan will have a new 28,000 square foot distillery in NoHo; Great Jones distilling will open in August with a cocktail bar and tasting program.

3. This piece by Scott Hocker takes a hard look at the (invariably tired) nostalgia for American bar culture, which seems to have left every “wet” county in the US with at least one lazy speakeasy. It’s worth a read, whether you’re a bar patron or someone considering opening a watering hole in the next few years.

Finally, in honor of Jack Daniels’ favorite unofficial partner, here’s a fun video about a Russian’s love for Coca Cola during the Cold War.