The sleepy little town of Lynchburg, Tenn., continues to be a hub of innovation in the world of whiskey: Jack Daniel’s recently announced yet another extension to its permanent line of spirits with the rollout of Single Barrel Heritage Barrel. Packaged in the same 750-milliliter bottles as their other single-barrel offerings, but with a blue label, Heritage Barrel should stand out on store shelves, so be on the lookout for it.
Jack has previously experimented with a similar product as special releases back in 2018 and 2019, but they’re finally confident it’s time to make this a regular part of their offering. So what’s different about this one?
Well, first let’s talk about what’s the same. The new Tennessee Whiskey is made from the traditional Jack Daniel’s mash bill of 80 percent corn, 12 percent malted barley and 8 percent rye, and uses the same yeast as Old No. 7. The whiskey is aged in higher floors of the rickhouses in what Jack calls “Track 2,” a collection of more than 50 warehouses situated around the distillery’s main bottling house. To qualify as a Tennessee Whiskey, Jack must age the alcohol on new charred American oak barrels, and they do, but here’s where the twists begin.
There are two main processes to prepare a wooden barrel to age whiskey. The best-known is charring the inside of the barrel. This basically involves lowering the barrel over what looks like the exhaust from a jet engine for less than a minute to convert the inner layer of the barrel into black charcoal. This layer is integral to adding color to clear whiskey, but it’s actually subtractive to the flavors, like a Brita filter extracting impurities from water.
Where most of the warm vanilla and caramel characteristics of oak that are imparted to the whiskey come from the barrel-toasting process — a more gentle heating of the inside of the barrel for up to a half-hour to release the butterscotch and sweet molasses aromas and flavors. Compare it to gently toasting a marshmallow over the fire versus those sociopaths who just set the things on fire and invariably burn themselves or someone else with sticky napalm marshmallow fluff.
For Single Barrel Heritage Barrel, Jack Daniel’s has worked with their cooperage to create a custom process, toasting the barrels for about twice as long as the usual 12-minute tanning session followed by a flash char, just enough to keep it legal for Tennessee Whiskey standards. If you’ve ever enjoyed a Woodford Reserve Double Oaked from Jack Daniel’s sister company under the Brown Forman umbrella, their finishing barrels are very similar to what Jack Daniel’s uses to age their new product for seven to eight years.
Jack Daniel's has come out with a new blackberry blend
Another key difference is barrel entry proof. By regulation, the highest alcohol content that a distillery can put into a barrel to age is 145 proof, and many distilleries like to age their whiskeys at higher levels to extract more flavor and character from the wood faster. Plus, paying for rickhouse space to age water isn’t the most cost-efficient way to run a distillery.
Jack has consciously chosen to change their procedures for this new product, entering the barrel at a very low proof point of 100, or 50 percent alcohol by volume. By aging this lower-proof liquid for a longer time than their usual No. 7 square-bottle Tennessee Whiskey, Jack Daniel’s maximized the sweet notes of the natural wood sugars that the toasting process has revealed.
Because the whiskey ages on higher floors of the rickhouses, it actually gains a few points of proof during its long repose, but Jack then adds water to proof it back down to the same 50 percent ABV that it entered the barrel at before they bottle the final product. The result is a lovely expression of Jack Daniel’s!
If you’re one of those people who detects a scent of bananas Foster from Jack’s proprietary yeast strain, you might find it more muted in this product. Instead, the nose is dominated by brown sugar and a creamy mouth feel that differentiates it from standard Jack Black. The fruitiness is more of a background note as baking spices take the forefront in a nice way.
Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Heritage Barrel should retail for around $70 a bottle, which feels reasonable to me, considering that it’s aged almost twice as long and carries a 20 percent proof premium over standard Jack Daniel’s. If you’re seeking a new everyday sipper that won’t break the bank, look for the blue label and thank me later!
