Q&A: Master Distiller Chris Fletcher
Questions and answers from the virtual tasting hosted by the Jack Daniel Distillery on Monday to announce its 14-Year-Old Tennessee Whiskey. Answers from Master Distiller Chris Fletcher, unless noted:
Do you have samples of the original aged whiskeys at the distillery to sample or reverse engineer?
No, we don’t. Of course, it would’ve changed significantly that long in a bottle, and some evaporation would’ve happened. That whiskey would’ve been sitting in a bottle for 120 years, if not longer. We don’t have any old historical samples. Still, if anybody’s found one and is willing to send it in, I’ll happily try it.
Regarding the possibility of 18-Year-Old and 21-Year-Old: Do you have older stock available, or are we several years from either of those releases?
The oldest barrels we have right now are approaching 15 [years]. So, the oldest stock we have is from the spring of 2010. Obviously, we’re still a couple of years away. We’ll continue to track that and see.
The barrels going into the age series, are they in the old barrel houses, the new climate-controlled ones, or a mix?
There are no climate-controlled barrel houses here. We don’t do that at all. We don’t heat or cool. We can control climate somewhat. We’ve got windows in the old ones and ridge vents on the newer ones that help us create the airflow. But no, we don’t climate control any house, and we don’t cycle these houses. These [barrels] could come from any house at the beginning, but we move them on average after the first eight years on an upper floor. Once they hit about eight years, we would then move them down to a first-floor location.
COURTESY PHOTO
For those who still push the misinformation that the newer barrel houses are climate-controlled to influence the whiskey-making process, Jack Daniel's Master Distiller Chris Fletcher is blunt: "We don’t heat or cool."
How many bottles are in the 14-Year release? Did the 14-Year come from any particular warehouse?
I think they all came out of the first floor of House 221. We don’t have 200 barrel houses; we have 97, but the first number is the location of the house. The 14 didn’t come out of any special house. And really there are no special houses. We look at them all in the same, and I think we can create wonderful and unique whiskeys out of any of our houses. We have such a diversity of warehousing spread across Moore County, and within about a six-, seven-mile radius, we have all this diversity in warehousing that we’ve just started to pull back some of the layers on with some of our single-barrel stuff. We have been laser-focused on consistency, and we still are laser-focused on consistency for products like Old No. 7 and things that we will not change.
Jack Daniel's Global Public Relations Director Svend Jansen responded: We did a little over 4,000 flat cases, so that’ll be about 24,000 bottles, approximately. There is more 10-Year-Old this year. This is the first year the 10-Year-Old will be available outside the United States. The 10-Year-Old will be available internationally, probably beginning in the next couple of months. Obviously, it’s got to be shipped overseas so it takes a little bit longer for it to be available.
You mentioned trying to recreate those 18- and 21-Year whiskeys. What would be the roadblocks that may prevent you from getting there?
This 14 gives me great confidence. I think we’re definitely going to get there. I tend to be pretty conservative, and under-promising and over-delivering is kind of the way I look at it. At the end of the day, if you stop and think we’re at 14 or 15 now; we’ve got to get at least three more years on that barrel. Three years in a new barrel, especially when the liquid levels are getting as low in that barrel as it is now, you’re getting this concentration effect, and there are no guarantees. We’re not going to throw any random number out there. We’re not going to get it to 17 years old and think, ‘Oh, it’s good, let’s throw it out there as a 17-Year-Old because the whole point of doing this is because it is our history and it’s our story to tell about making whiskey and Lynchburg.
So, 18 becomes the next focus for us. The only caveat I would say is that if we feel like we start to lose the flavor and the balance that we want in that product and don’t feel like we’re doing it justice at an 18-year-old, then maybe we won’t. But especially after tasting these three whiskeys today, I don’t anticipate that to be the case. It actually gives me great confidence in the direction that we’re going.
Is the plan for future 14-Year batches to also be barrel strength?
It has become so fun to let Mother Nature lead the way with 14. I don’t anticipate us changing that. I think it’s really interesting to hang on for the ride at this point and see where we go with our 14-Year-Olds moving forward.
Are you surprised by any of the flavors coming through across 10, 12, and 14? Any particular notes you expect to continue or develop further with older releases, like 18-Year plus?
Well, I don’t know. If you go from 14 to 18, that’s massive. I mean, a 4-year-old age cycle in American whiskey; that’s a whole lot of product. I don’t know exactly where we’ll land when we get to 18. At the end of the day, I just don’t know. We have not done this in Lynchburg in our lifetimes, so there’s just some unknown there.
As far as unusual flavor notes, the way the esters rounded out in the 10 was unique for me this year. I think this batch four of the 10-Year-Old is probably the most unique of any of the four that we’ve done to date because it’s almost like that apple peel turned into this cherry candy kind of hard ribbon cherry candy or something to me, which is fun.
The 12-year-old has evolved from batch one to me. It was so butterscotch and caramel-y, like caramel sauce. Now, batch two of the 12 has more oak forward and barrel forward, and barrel spice and dryer finish for me than batch one. And I think batch three has been right in between. It’s been a lot of fun to follow along on this journey. The 14-Year-Old, as soon as I popped the cork on it, and I started to get the waft of that molasses and tobacco and leather and that walking into the barrel house type of smell that I get that never gets old.
How about a 10- or 12-Year rye?
Some of you have probably heard me say our rye whiskey, in the last two years, we have just entered this sweet spot. Rye whiskey is something that we are batting around. Yes, I have thought about what we want to do with rye. One of the things that I learned over the years with rye is that rye sweetens up a little bit more in the barrel with a little more age on it. And I think here in Lynchburg, our rye whiskey with another year, maybe even 18 months or two years on it, just really brings our rye recipe into this really great sweet spot.
It’s just more of a wait-and-see approach on what we think will be right for our rye whiskey and how to do dated rye from us. I know that’s a bit of a vague answer, but at the end of the day, it’s more of a wait-and-see because we don’t have rye whiskey that’s that old yet. We’re going to continue to experiment and push it out and move barrels around and do all the things and all of the due diligence that we’re doing with the Tennessee Whiskey.
Are you, for those 18- and 21-Year-Olds, are there any barrels that you were purposely aging the entire time on the lower floors to try and keep the barrel influence from getting out of control? And should we expect higher proof points on the 18 and 21 if they ever get released?
No, nothing has stayed bottom to try to get it as old as possible. No, and honestly, because I love what we’ve done so far, I don’t know how else to explain it. So, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And it’s certainly not a case of just trying to get to a number. I think people understand if you were sitting here in this office and it’s like, “Hey, you’re going to put your name on this bottle of whiskey that hadn’t been around since Jack Daniel was doing it here in Lynchburg.” We’re not going to get gimmicky around proofing stuff or just trying to extend it infinitely to get a wild number on there.
My goal with this has been from the beginning: 10, 12, 14, 18, 21 – that’s it. Put the best juice in the bottle at each of those marks because that is our truth, that is our history and it is absolutely a tribute to Mr. Jack himself.
The date on when either 18 or 21 was last produced?
It was all done prior to Prohibition. I don’t think we had any actual paper records or filing records or ATF recordings, even for tax or anything, back in the day. We can tell by the bottle shape and the glass that it was the early 1900s. Of course, we went out of production here in Lynchburg in 1909, so we know it had to be prior to 1909. So that’s where that early 1900s timeframe comes in for us. Nonetheless, we’ll go back and triple-check any bottling records, but I don’t think we have anything we could pull from to confirm a firm date.
