Jack Daniels Bicentennial 1796-1996

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, just 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.

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.