Jack Daniel's New American Single Malt Whiskey
Notice the classic JD look, but the inclusion of the "fluting" on the bottle... it adds a touch of elegance!
Jack Daniel’s American Single Malt
by Colonel Steve Akley
Earlier today, the Jack Daniel Distillery officially announced the introduction of their new Single Malt Whiskey. I had an opportunity to taste this one yesterday with Jack Daniel Master Distiller Chris Fletcher, and a group of individuals from the media and social media influencers world. What follows is my firsthand account of the meeting as well as a look at the whiskey.
Our Zoom tasting crew. Chris Fletcher is on the top row, third from the left.
I’ve been lucky enough to attend live or do a Zoom event with several Jack Daniel’s product launches lately, and once again, this was a great event. First off, the media kit was cool. It came boxed with two Copita Whiskey glasses and a small bottle of the new single malt. Master Distiller Chris Fletcher was in attendance, and he’s just a great guy. He’s very approachable and down-to-earth. He does a great job of explaining everything and I have to think he’s a very genuine person based o the time I’ve spent with him. He likes questions and is an open book when it comes to this stuff.
Chris started out with a little history of when this project got started. The first experiments to decide what they would do with single malts go back to 2012. They wanted to try a few different grains out and ultimately picked a different barley than they use in their regular Tennessee Whiskey because using 100% of a single grain means they don’t need the exact same qualities in making a whiskey. They also ran those early tests through the famous charcoal filtration and landed on 10’ feet, which is, in fact, the same amount of charcoal they put their regular Tennessee Whiskeys through. Their rye only goes through 6’, again, which was determined via trial and error.
The product they ultimately landed on was run in 3 or 4 batches in 2012 and 2013. They are using that stock for what is going to be sold in this product that will be a regular part of the Jack Daniel’s portfolio. “Regular” being defined as they will always have it for sale, but it doesn’t mean you can run out and find it on the shelves at your local grocery store. It is going to be Travel Retail product almost exclusively (you will be able to find it on some military bases).
The idea here being it’s closer to other styles of global whiskey and may grab the attention of international travelers which could result in their first experience with Jack Daniel’s products. That’s kind of a bummer for sure, because, spoiler alert, when we get to the tasting this is some really good whiskey. I’m hoping perhaps they counterbalance it a bit by making it at least available at the distillery if they don’t have enough to fill the shelves domestically.
Chris went on to tell us that what really makes this one unique is the fact it was finished for about three years in sherry butts. If you aren’t familiar with sherry butts, they are these huge barrels; like 2 1/2 times the size of a standard 53-gallon whiskey barrel commonly used in America.
After we ran through what the product was and how it was developed, Chris led us on a tasting. Here are the notes he shared as he tasted it with us:
Nose: Milk chocolate and nougat upfront, then it yields to notes of honey, sherry plum and berry.
Taste: Dark fruit, plum, raisins, milk chocolate, maybe even a dried fruit like a cherry in milk chocolate, oak, and there is just a sweetness on the finish where you do get the sherry notes from the sherry butts.
How about my notes?
Tremendous… amazing… incredible… you name the superlative, it lives up to it. The fruit on this one is insane. It is a sipper for sure. The 90 proof hangs with you for a while which is really nice.
I’ve said for a while, with its new product, Jack Daniel’s has been “out-bourboning” bourbon in some ways. They are at the forefront of everything going on and their new products truly hit the mark for bourbon fans. I’ll also say with their approach of doing this small meetings and Chris Fletcher making himself so available, they are kinda “out-crafting” craft whiskey. These are tremendous compliments for a company that is the biggest at what they do. The knock on big companies tend to be that they are inaccessible to people and they don’t change very quickly.
That’s certainly not the case for what’s happening at the Jack Daniel Distillery at the moment. They are flying high and this one is yet another winner.
