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For most of my adult life, a good night out usually means having good company, good food, a good hangout and more often than not, a bottle of whiskey with accompanying mixers. And the whiskey of choice is usually good old Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey.

I was thrilled to find out that the famous Jack Daniel’s Distillery was not far off from where I was in the U.S.

Located in the small town of Lynchburg, Tennessee, the distillery has a visitor’s center and provides free guided tour of their facilities.

A huge increase in the number of visitors in recent years have provided the motivation for the distillery to upgrade their visitor’s center.

The new visitor’s center contains exhibits that summarize the whole whiskey making process.

The original marble statue of Mr. Jack Daniel himself is displayed right in the middle of the visitor’s center.

The tour started out with a short bus ride which took us to the far end of the distillery, where the rickyard was located. Here, sugar maple timbers are made into charcoal, which will be used in the mellowing process.

The distillery is very particular about the water that is being used to produce their whiskey. They only draw from an underground water source of a nearby limestone cave. The crystal clear water arrived at ground level at the constant temperature of 56 degrees Fahrenheit all year round. Perfect for making whiskey.

Next, we were brought to an old building which used to house Jack Daniel’s office.

Inside Daniel’s office lies an old safe that, believe or not, caused his unfortunate demise. Early one morning, Daniel was unable to get his safe to open because he had trouble remembering the combination. He kicked the safe out of frustration and injured his toe. An infection later set in and slowly spread to his leg, which was eventually amputated. Even after the amputation, Daniel still did not survive and died of blood poisoning from the infection.

The tour continued to the production facilities of the distillery. We got to see giant tanks with fermenting mixtures of spring water and mash made of grounded corn, rye, barley malt and yeast.

The fermented mixtures were then distilled on 20,000 gallons stills.

After the distillation, the whiskey is put through the mellowing process by filtering it with sugar maple charcoals. Charcoal mellowing is unique to Jack Daniel’s Whiskey. This gives Jack Daniel’s its unique character and flavour. Other bourbons do not go through this process.

The whiskey were then allowed to age in hand-made wooden barrels.

These barrels of aging whiskey were stored in a multi-storey building called the barrel house. The barrels will be slowly raised through the floors year by year. So the higher up a barrel is in the barrel house, the closer it is to reaching maturity.

I thought that by going on a tour of a distillery I would get to sample some whiskey. I couldn’t be more wrong. Unfortunately for me, the distillery is situated in Moore county. One of the many dry counties in Tennessee. A dry county is prohibited from selling alcoholic beverages.

As the tour ended and we were brought back to the visitor center, we were treated with a choice of either coffee or refreshing lemonade, which was pretty nice considering it was a free tour. But still, I was disappointed with the lack of free alcohol which would have certainly brought the tour up a notch.

Although the distillery were not allowed sell alcohol, they have a special exemption from the state government to sell special commemorative bottles of their whiskey. A gesture to promote the local tourism I guess.

Of course, one can opt for a whole barrel of Jack Daniel’s Singel Barrel Whiskey, for an affordable price of just 10,000 US Dollars.

How I wish my Mastercard had a metallic color. If only, if only.