Jack Daniel's Barrel Tree: Bigger and better
Jeff Reed
The 2024 Lynchburg Barrel Tree at Jack Daniel's Distillery
The first Barrel Tree wowed locals in 2011. In its 14th year, the legendary Jack Daniel’s brand has raised these iconic holiday staples from sea to shining sea.
DUANE CROSS
Publisher • Editor
“The idea was to use some barrels to build a Christmas tree out of barrels and make an event out of it,” says Greg Luehrs, Director of Partnerships for Jack Daniel’s at Brown-Forman.
The Barrel Tree program hit the road in 2015, and this year is in 11 cities across the nation: Lynchburg; Buffalo, N.Y.; Nashville; New Brunswick, N.J.; New York; Oklahoma City; San Antonio, Texas; San Francisco; Tampa, Fla.; Venice, Calif.; and Washington, D.C.
Each barrel stands 36 inches tall, is 22 inches wide at the top, and 26-28 inches in the middle. The first barrel tree was 26 feet tall and made from 140 barrels. This year, the tree is even more prominent.
“There’s a lot of logistics that come into play,” Luehrs notes. “I have a team of guys driving trucks and trailers from Lynchburg to wherever those trees are, putting ’em up.
“One trailer holds a tree, and then they come back to Lynchburg, pick up some more barrels, and go to the next one. It’s a big puzzle to put together when you’ve got that many trees and six guys.”
Luehrs says that while the Barrel Tree is a holiday season icon, the requests for 2025’s locations begin to roll in next month.
“Some of our field teams will start requesting barrel trees for where they can go,” he says. “And honestly, it started this past Friday (Nov. 15). I got a request in for next year already, for a tree at the Nashville Airport.”
The last thing I want is a call that somebody’s on top of the barrel tree for a picture.
• Greg Luehrs
The last thing I want is a call that somebody’s on top of the barrel tree for a picture.
• Greg Luehrs
The heavy lifting begins a few months later. “May, June, we’ll start looking at those requests and laying out the schedule to see what’s possible,” he adds. “By the end of August, mid-September, we hope to have all of our dates ready to roll.
“It takes a lot of behind-the-scenes action to make everything fall into place – from getting the barrels, getting the schedule. We also build them on plywood to make sure [the barrel trees] are safe and level. And we cut the plywood to make sure everything’s good.”
While the trees are a puzzle, they are an engineered puzzle. Each tree results from an architectural firm’s engineering drawing. After that, the Risk Management team at Brown-Forman weighs in. “We’re going to make sure everything’s approved,” Luehrs contends. “Our trees can hold up to a 140-mile-an-hour wind, so it’s good to have a mistake procedure, but luckily, we haven’t had any issues.”
In November, the team put up the first tree (Denver), and Lynchburg’s was the last – Dec. 4 and 5, before the lighting on Dec. 7 as part of the annual Christmas in Lynchburg festivities.
“The Lynchburg tree is a nine-tier tree, so you’re talking about 30 feet in the air,” Luehrs notes. “That is the largest one that we have ever built. It’s 220 barrels. The other trees will be between a five-tier and a seven-tier tree.”
Luehrs mentions that the trees have a barricade to discourage people from trying to climb the tree. “The last thing I want is a call that somebody’s on top of the barrel tree for a picture. That’s not the news I want to see waking up in the morning.”
BOOTS ON THE GROUND
Bill Fitzgerald, Tommy Miller, Justin Metzger, Jeremiah Rice, and Will Burch finished the Lynchburg Barrel Tree in two days – Dec. 4-5.
