Jack Daniel’s Black Label Tennessee whiskey—established over 150 years ago and sold in distinctive square bottles with a black label—is the best-selling whiskey in the world. Its founder, Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel (1849-1911) said, “Every day we make it, we’ll make it the best we can.”
Jack Daniel’s story is an excellent example of how we all need “extra parents” and we will all be called upon at some point in our lives to serve as extra parents. As described in YOUR LIFEPATH: “[All children] need coaches, teachers, bosses, godparents, uncles, aunts, neighbors, and family friends to help fill in and smooth out what they’ve learned from their primary parents.”
Daniel, born in Lynchburg, was the youngest of ten children. His mother died shortly after his birth due to complications from childbirth, and his father died of pneumonia while serving with the Confederate States Army. After the death of his parents, Daniel was taken in by a local preacher, farmer, and distiller named Dan Call. He taught young Jack how to produce Tennessee whiskey through the “Lincoln County Process,” a distilling method that filters whiskey through sugar maple charcoal.
In 1875, Daniel used his inheritance to establish a distilling business with Call. A few years later he purchased the hollow and land where the distillery is now located. Daniel never married and did not have children, but he took his nephew Lem Motlow under his wing, and put him in charge of the distillery’s bookkeeping. Jack Daniel’s had a surge in popularity after the whiskey received the gold medal for the finest whiskey at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. However, due to his failing health, in 1907 Daniel turned the distillery over to Motlow, who operated and expanded the business for another four decades.
For over 75 years Jack Daniels was a locally successful distillery, but that all changed in 1955 when Frank Sinatra brought a glass of his favorite whiskey onstage during a concert. He told his fans: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Daniels, and it’s nectar of the gods.” His praise led to sales of Jack Daniels doubling within a year, and to supply shortages that lasted for nearly twenty years. But that is another story for another LIFEPATH Newsletter!
