Jack Daniel’s is one of those whiskeys almost everyone has come across at some point, whether it was a bottle on a friend’s kitchen counter, a Jack and Coke at a wedding bar, or the black-and-white label printed on a T-shirt. Plenty of people could describe that square bottle of Old No. 7 from memory, and yet a good deal of the brand’s history rarely gets talked about.
The life of Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel is already covered in The Complete History of Jack Daniel’s and 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Jasper Newton ‘Jack’ Daniel, so this piece looks at the brand instead.
Drawn from published histories of the distillery, these five Jack Daniel’s facts cover a tax district number, three cuts in bottling strength, Frank Sinatra’s loyalty, a copycat whiskey from Kentucky, and a Prohibition heist in St. Louis.
1. “Old No. 7” Traces Back to an 1876 Tax Shake-Up
Over the years, people have offered all sorts of explanations for the “Old No. 7”. One of the best-documented explanations comes from Peter Krass, whose biography Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel traces the number back to federal tax records.
Jack Daniel and his early partner, Rev. Dan Call, were originally registered as Distillery No. 7 in Tennessee’s 4th Internal Revenue tax district. In 1876, Commissioner of Internal Revenue General Green B. Raum merged the state’s 4th and 5th districts into one larger 5th District, and the distillery was given a new designation as Distillery No. 16.
Rather than switch to the new number, Jack Daniel carried on marking his barrels and earthenware jugs with “Old No. 7.” According to Eric Zandona in The Atlas of Bourbon and American Whiskey, Daniel did this so that customers who already knew his sour mash whiskey could still recognize it after the district change.
Krass calls the move “[indulgence] in civil disobedience,” stemming from the fact that the consolidation of the districts was “despised”.
Today, the name “Old No.7” is as famous as the name Jack Daniel’s, and is one of the most recognizable whiskeys in the world.
2. Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Used To Be Higher Strength
Old No. 7 is bottled at 80 proof today, but the Black Label whiskey has been sold at several different strengths over the past century. In Jack Daniel’s: The Unofficial Bottle Collector’s Guide, Volume I, Daniel J. McCarley records that in the early 1900s, Jack Daniel’s whiskey was available at 130 proof.
The first reduction came in 1938. Once Prohibition had ended and whiskey production was legal again, the distillery, then run by proprietor Lem Motlow, set the strength at 90 proof. Old No. 7 stayed at 90 proof for close to half a century, until parent company Brown-Forman brought it down to 86 proof in 1987.
The third cut came in 2004, when the whiskey was reduced to 80 proof, or 40% ABV.
For collectors, the proof printed on an older Black Label bottle can help narrow down roughly when it was released.
3. Frank Sinatra Was Buried With a Bottle of Jack Daniel’s
American comedian, actor, and composer Jackie Gleason (a.k.a The Great One) is often credited with introducing Frank Sinatra to Jack Daniel’s, although Sinatra himself gave the credit to Humphrey Bogart.
In Jack Daniel’s Bottle Collector’s Guide, Volume 2, Daniel J. McCarley points to a recording found by Charles Pignone, president of Frank Sinatra Enterprises, of Sinatra on stage at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on March 8, 1982.
“I was introduced to this drink by a great friend. A great man named Mr. Bogart,” Sinatra told the audience. He explained that Bogart suggested it after dinner at his house in the late 1940s, and that his own reply was, “What the hell is Jack Daniel’s?” Bogart poured Sinatra a glass, and “it was a happy marriage from then on.”
Sinatra went on to call the whiskey “the nectar of the gods” and “the oil to my engine,” and he spoke up for it in public for over 50 years without ever signing an endorsement contract or being paid by the company.
Angelo Lucchesi, Jack Daniel’s first salesman, kept him supplied with the good stuff, and the two became close friends.
When Sinatra died on May 14, 1998, at the age of 82, he was buried at Desert Memorial Park near Palm Springs with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his casket.
4. Jack Daniel’s Sued a Copycat in 1960 and Lost
During a severe nationwide shortage of Jack Daniel’s in 1957, entrepreneur Frank Silverman launched the Ezra Brooks Distilling Company, selling whiskey sourced from Kentucky.
According to Brian F. Haara in Bourbon Justice: How Whiskey Law Shaped America, Ezra Brooks copied almost every defining part of the Jack Daniel’s design, including the square bottle, the black-and-white label, the old-time sketch of a distillery and the neck label.
The advertising slogans were very similar, too, so Jack Daniel’s “Rare Old Sippin’ Whiskey” became “Real Sippin’ Whiskey” and “90 Proof by Choice” became “90 Proof for Character.” Jack Daniel’s “Charcoal Mellowed Drop by Drop” was reworked as “Every Sip Is Mellowed ‘Cause Every Drop Is Charcoal Filtered.”
Ezra Brooks even echoed the Jack Daniel’s shortage line, “There isn’t just quite enough to go around,” with its own “There ain’t enuf to go around,” even though Ezra Brooks had no shortage at the time.
Jack Daniel’s brought an unfair competition case against Hoffman Distilling, but in 1960 a federal district court ruled against the Tennessee brand. The court decided the Ezra Brooks name was distinct enough, and it noted that the label clearly said “Kentucky” rather than “Tennessee.”
For the full story, read Ezra Brooks vs Jack Daniel’s: War of the Whiskeys.
5. The King of the Bootleggers Made Off With 42,800 Gallons of Jack Daniel’s
In the spring of 1923, a business broker named R. A. Organ approached Lem Motlow about buying the whiskey stored in his warehouse in St. Louis. According to Peter Krass in Blood and Whiskey, Organ was supposedly acting for Don H. Robinson of Chicago.
In June, Organ agreed to buy 893 barrels for $125,000, although Ben A. Green gives a reported price of $122,000 in Jack Daniel’s Legacy. What Motlow didn’t know was that Robinson’s attorney was George Remus, an infamous bootlegger who planned to remove the whiskey in secret, cut it with water, and sell it for around $2 million.
In August, Remus’s men parked trucks full of empty barrels in a garage next to the warehouse. They spent two weeks pumping the whiskey out through hoses and then refilled the barrels with water. Green puts the total at 42,800 gallons, stolen in what became known as the “milk job.”
When the barrels were finally checked by the government, the water had turned to vinegar, which the government sold for $1,200.
Still Old No. 7
Jack Daniel’s has a long and fascinating history, and there always seems to be another story to uncover, whether it turns up in an old court case, a bottle collector’s guide or a stack of Prohibition-era newspaper clippings.
For the complete lowdown on Jack Daniel’s, the books mentioned above are well worth picking up.
Read the full article at 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Jack Daniel’s
