Good Getaways

Lynchburg, Tennessee

Home of the world-famous Jack Daniel’s distillery

The Moore County courthouse anchors Lynchburg’s square. Nearby is the distillery campus, where a bronze statue of Jack Daniel (on the rocks) stands in front of Cave Springs, source of 800 gallons of water per minute for whiskey making. A tour takes you to see the charcoal works, the grain mill, the distilling process and, at right, a barrel house and Jack’s preserved office. Good Getaways

Story and photos by David Moore

You don’t have to be a whiskey drinker to enjoy a getaway to Lynchburg, Tennessee, and the Jack Daniel’s distillery. And you don’t have to – but you certainly can – make it an overnight stay.

It’s a pleasant drive from Marshall County to the distillery in Lynchburg, a town of some 6,000 folks in the scenic, rolling hills of southcentral Tennessee.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the distillery is located on part of a 1,700-acre campus scattered with 78 barrel houses. Jack Daniel’s 700 or so workers – many of them multi-generational employees – ship 119 million bottles of the famous whiskey annually to over 170 countries around the globe.

While its home of Moore County is dry, you

Overnight accommodations will likely take you out of Lynchburg, but there are hotels and quaint inns nearby. One option is down the road at Mulberry Lavender Farm and B&B. Breakfast, above, is served at the door of its rustic-chic cottage. Family-style lunches are served at Miss Mary Bobo’s in downtown Lynchburg, left.

can buy beer and wine in town, but Jack Daniel’s is sold only at the attractive visitor’s center. Even then, by state law, you are only paying for a souvenir bottle. The whiskey is technically free.

Tours of the distillery cost $20-$35 and last between just over an hour to an hour and a half – the difference being if you take the “dry” tour or sign up for one including a tasting.

You’ll learn a lot about not just Jack the whiskey, but Jack the man, who for his stature in the world of whiskey-making stood only 5-foot-2 – shorter than eight of his black-label bottles stacked end to end. As a young boy, he ran away to the next-door farm of a preacher who had a whiskey still. As a teen, Jack bought the still for $25 and launched his legacy.

Not surprisingly, the presence of Jack Daniel the man can be seen nearly everywhere in the small town that a visitor turns. And there are a lot of visitors. Annually, Jack Daniel’s the distillery draws 275,000 people from every state and many countries.

Good Life Magazine

If you go ...

Lynchburg, Tenn., is about 75 miles from Arab via Fayetteville; or 85 miles from Guntersville through Grant and Fayetteville. The countryside is attractive. If you enjoy driving and want to see a corner of Alabama many folks miss, you can return home via an easterly route to Winchester, Tenn., then south through Hytop, Ala., to Scottsboro.