LOT ID: 1022-155
End Date : Jan 04 2023 08:00 PM
Jack Daniel's 1981 Gold Medal. Seventh Release. Special Limited Edition. 1 Litre. 43%.
This special bottle is the seventh in the Gold Medal series and honors the 1981 Institut Pour Les Selections De La Qualité in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It had been 27 years since the Jack Daniel Distillery had entered a Gold Medal competition, and much had happened with the Distillery during that time.
Within two years of winning the 1954 Star of Excellence in Brussels, Belgium, Jack Daniel's had experienced a 100% sales increase as well as a change in ownership. Lem Motlow's four sons - Reagor, Robert, Hap and Conner - sold the Distillery to Brown-Forman Corp. in 1956.
Jack Daniel's continued to grow, with volume increasing tenfold by the end of the 1970s. Their Tennessee Whiskey was being sold worldwide and had developed a loyal and diverse following, from bankers to bikers, from movie stars to rock stars. Despite all these changes, however, there was nothing different about their commitment to making whiskey. And they thought it was important to demonstrate that commitment by entering the Brussels-based Monde Selection Institut Pour Les Selections De La Qualité in 1981.
The judges awarded Jack Daniel's the institutions top medal, the "Grand Gold Medal with Palm Leaves," at ceremonies held in Amsterdam. Another quarter of a century has passed, and they still adhere to Mr. Jack's philosophy in making sure their whiskey is of the highest quality: "Every day they make it, they make it the best they can."
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FILLING LEVEL
Lower Neck
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Jasper ‘Jack’ Daniel was born in Tennessee around 1850. Orphaned as a child, the young Daniel fell in with a local preacher and moonshiner, Dan Call, and was taught distilling by one of Call’s slaves, Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green. Call and Daniel subsequently set up their own distillery in Lynchburg, employing Green (who had been emancipated after the Civil War) as Master Distiller. Daniel became sole owner of the distillery in 1884; Green’s descendants have now worked at the distillery for seven generations.
Daniel passed the distillery to his nephews, including Lem Motlow, before his death in 1911. Motlow soon became sole owner, but the distillery was closed for most of the next few decades due to state and national Prohibition statutes. Jack Daniel’s distillery finally reopened in 1947, months before Motlow’s death; in 1956 his children sold the company to Brown Forman, who have built Jack Daniel’s into one of the world’s biggest-selling whiskey brands.
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Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.
This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.
BID | DATE | TIME | |
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£85.00 | 4th January 2023 | 07:34 | |
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