Jack Daniel’s Favors Tennessee Whiskey Law Defining Tennessee Whiskey as Jack Daniel’s

Tennessee whiskey maker Jack
Daniel’s is an unsurprisingly big fan of a local law that
basically defines whiskey by standards set by Jack Daniel’s. Under
current Tennessee law, only locally-made spirits fermented from
mash of at least 51 percent corn, aged in new charred oak barrels,
filtered through maple charcoal, and bottled at a minimum of 80
proof can legally be labeled “Tennessee whiskey.” Not
coincidentally, that’s “almost to the letter the process used to
make Jack Daniel’s,” The Associated Press
reports. 

This narrow definition of Tennessee whiskey is harming craft
distilleries, claim opponents, who are pushing a new bill that
would loosen the state’s whiskey definition. Either smaller
distilleries go their own way and forego the label (and its
marketing benefits), or they make whiskey that ends up tasting more
or less like Jack Daniel’s. “This would be similar to
Anheuser-Busch saying, ‘You have to use this recipe to call
yourselves an American beer,'” state Rep. Ryan Haynes
(R-Knoxville) told
The Tennessean. “I don’t think it’s right that we put
something in our law that is basically protectionism.”  

But there’s more intrigue in this whiskey war: Jack Daniel’s
says the true instigator of changing the law is British
conglomerate Diageo PLC, maker of George Dickel, another official
“Tennessee whiskey” and Jack Daniel’s biggest competitor.
Republican state Rep. Bill Sanderson (R-Kenton), who introduced the
new measure, acknowledged that he did so at Diageo’s bequest. But
he also said the bill would help the state’s burgeoning
micro-distillery scene. 

… Sanderson emphasized that his bill wouldn’t do away with
last year’s law enacted largely on the behest of Jack Daniel’s
corporate parent, Louisville, Ky.,-based Brown-Forman Corp. The
principal change would be to allow Tennessee whiskey makers to
reuse barrels, which he said would present considerable savings
over new ones that can cost $600 each.

“There are a lot of ways to make high-quality whiskey, even if
it’s not necessarily the way Jack Daniel’s does it,” Sanderson
said. “What gives them the right to call theirs Tennessee whiskey,
and not others?”

[..] “This isn’t about Diageo, as all of our Tennessee whiskey
is made with new oak,” said Diageo executive vice president Guy L.
Smith IV. “This is about Brown-Forman trying to stifle competition
and the entrepreneurial spirit of micro distillers.

In neighboring Kentucky, the new/old barrel distinction is
similarly critical when it comes to bourbon. Early Times, from Jack
Daniel’s parent Brown-Forman, is marketed as Kentucky
whiskey rather than bourbon because it’s made in
reused barrels. The bourbon standards, however, were set by the
federal government about a half-century ago.