A slightly blurry photo of the Tennessee Squire Room at Jack Daniel’s Distillery

You may not have realized it before, but there’s a secret room at Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg, TN that not even the tour guides are allowed to talk about. It’s called the Tennessee Squire Room.

It was built 12 years ago as a 25 x 14 room trimmed and floored in pine and densely packed with pieces of history shared by other Tennessee Squires. The website for Tennessee Squires is password protected, and if you weren’t aware the Tennessee Squire Room even existed upon your visit you won’t find the distillery staff willing to help you discover it. It’s that kind of secret.

On my first visit to the Tennessee Squire Room, I was asked to sit at the back of the main lobby. Moments later, a woman appeared and asked if I had a tour. When I told her I had, she smiled patiently and said nothing like it was my turn to guide the conversation. I took the hint and told her I was a Tennessee Squire. “Right this way,” she said, briefly mentioning she would have waited all day for me to say so.

To become a Tennessee Squire, you gotta love Jack, and you have to be nominated by a current Squire who can only nominate one person in their entire lifetime. I have Bartt Baird, a former co-worker at WKRN-TV, to thank for my nomination.

As a Tennessee Squire, you get a very nice gold-embossed deed to a small plot of land and a certificate making you an honorary citizen of Moore County. You’ll occasionally receive letters from locals asking permission to let their cows graze your land or problems with skunks or possums. You also get to hang out in the Tennessee Squire Room and share the Jack Daniel’s experience through the many items left by other Squires. You’ll find one I left among the challenge coins, and I’ve probably already told you too much.

Short Mountain Distillery invites you to learn some of the basics about food and beverage fermentation from fermentation expert and author Sandor Katz! This workshop is one of the first in a series of food and beverage workshops we’ll host throughout the year.

WHAT: Basic food and beverage fermentation workshop with
COST: $15 ($40 if you’d like a copy of Kat’s latest book)
WHEN: July 14, 2012 – 9a.m. – 12p.m. (three hours)
WHERE: Short Mountain Distillery – 119 Mountain Spirits Ln., Woodbury, TN 37190
LIMIT: 15 people (contact John Whittemore to reserve a spot – 615-216-0830)

Katz was recently featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross talking about his latest and most comprehensive book on fermentation called The Art of Fermentation. In 2010, Katz was also recently featured in a five page spread in the New Yorker Magazine.

This basic fermentation workshop is a shortened version of Katz’s multi-day,  hands-on workshops he gives around the world. You’ll learn how some of your favorite foods are actually fermented and how you can prepare and store your own fermented foods such as cheese, beer, chocolate, tea, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, salami, miso, tempeh, soy sauce, yogurt and much more.

Today’s news that the head of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce is out is an opportunity for the state’s business community to choose the kind of leadership that reflects the business values and practices of our state’s very best job creators.

Deb Woolley, president and CEO, has left in accordance with the terms of her contract, effective May 31, according to the chamber. Wayne Scharber, the chamber’s vice president for environment and taxation, will serve as interim president amid the search for a more permanent replacement.

“We are going to build on the Tennessee Chamber’s 100-year track record of success, with new programs and fresh ideas on how better to serve Tennessee businesses and industries,” Bill Ozier, chairman of the chamber’s board, said in a statement.

In May of last year, Chamber leadership under President Deb Woolley came into question by state business leaders in multiple press releases from members like Alcoa, Nissan, FedEx, Comcast, AT&T, Embraer, KPMG, and UnitedHealth. The questions followed the Chamber’s promotion of HB600, a bill championed by back-benched politicians and lobbyists seeking to stop cities and municipalities from implementing the kind of nondiscrimination policies that separate the nation’s very best businesses from the mediocre. The bill embarrassed the state with national news portraying the bill and those promoting it for exactly what they are.

As the Chamber seeks the kind of leadership our state deserves, I hope it considers the important questions that were asked by business leaders, including Short Mountain Distillery in an open letter published in May 2011:

My concern is how the very best brands and job creating members were represented by the Chamber. What assurances do other businesses have that Chamber leadership will adequately represent the values of its best members? What can the Chamber do to ensure the values of the Chamber’s most valued brands wont be co-opted by personal political agendas causing members to issue embarrassing press releases to create distance from Chamber mistakes?

Today’s news hopefully begins answering these questions. Tennessee’s business community deserves leadership that lifts our state up as an example, not one that embarrasses our Governor and our state’s best business leaders with the values of our very worst politicians.

This is the good stuff. It takes days to get here, and the final hours can drag on for nearly half a day as the spirit slowly trickles from the still.

The spirit run takes time, and it takes patience. It takes a little choreography and then it takes waiting for time to do its thing. You don’t always know what you’re going to get, but you can have an idea from the taste of the beer before it’s reborn in the heat of a separate stripping run.

It’s an amazing ancient craft full of deep archetypal processes for those mesmerized by the alchemy of it all. Like most ancient crafts that capture the imaginations of the passionate, there are some basic steps decorated with secrets, some shared in fellowship and some unlocked and seared into memory through necessary failure. Every drop is a chapter. Every bottle is a story.

That’s probably the best way to look at it, and it’s certainly how our customers thankfully view it. The idea of selling out of Moonshine two or three times a week is still an unsettling feeling. Last week, we had to implement Moonshine rations (one bottle per customer) at the Stillhouse Store until we make a bigger release into stores. Our first shipment sold out so fast our distributor decided to wait until we’ve filled a massive order before another shipment.

Most of the thousands of visitors we’ve had since opening in April have a strong connection to Moonshine. We’ve got a great team making a great product and a wonderful brand that tells a story that belongs to many families in Tennessee.

Nothing beats seeing hard work so appreciated in so many different ways. Lately, it’s seeing how other people use our product, from co-branded cookies and cake to candies. Our Moonshine is showing up on menus. We even saw our product recently used in a funeral of a very dear friend and huge fan of our authentic Tennessee Moonshine. It’s been nothing short of amazing to feel such a deep and powerful connection with customers.

I haven’t submitted our product to contests yet, but I’m so proud to see it next to the hard work of other new Tennessee brands now emerging that share our state’s rich whiskey making heritage with the world. There are big things on the horizon for whiskey lovers in Tennessee thanks to the energy and vision of some truly remarkable people who I look forward to working with more and more.

Our Moonshiners tell us Trucker’s Pride is about as good as it gets when looking for a variety of corn to make shine, but it’s a little hard to come by, so we’re making our own.

In this video, Short Mountain Distillery’s John Whittemore talks about the choices we make in farming practices. Special thanks to Jeff Schuler for shooting and sharing this video.

Making moonshine is still illegal without the proper licenses and nod to the revenuers, but scenes like this are certainly more rare than they used to be.

That’s Pharis Macon Conley on the left kneeling behind several gallons of confiscated moonshine with a fellow Cannon County deputy. Conley severed three terms as Sheriff of Cannon County from 1948-1954 and saw his share of moonshine busts.

Fast-foward … (Moonshine: The Next Generation, Short Mountain Distillery Creating Legal Beverage):

The corn liquor it produces is not just any moonshine, but the moonshine your grandparents may have drunk. This is because Short Mountain employs three of the best moonshiners this area has to offer: Ricky Estes, Jimmy Simpson and Ronald Lawson. The three of them have given up their days of illegal wildcatting. Judging by the smile on Lawson’s face (who was on the property the day of our visit), it seems to be working out well for them. Along with head distiller Josh Smotherman, they make a quality product that meets all legal requirements. Now that’s a brand new angle; the revenuers like the moonshiners.

… to today (Moonshine Monday: Short Mountain Distillery)

Kaufman says, “When we opened, we already had 150 years of distilling experience thanks to these three guys.” Where Smotherman has access to all the technology that he needs for large-batch production, the moonshiners track the progress of the steam through the pipes as the alcohol boils off and then condenses by feeling the temperature of the copper pipes, listening to the hiss of the vortex in the pot still and watching the bubbles in the Carlo Rossi jugs they use to trap their lovely corn likker as it drips out of the outlet of the still.

Sometimes people need a good reminder of how things used to be. We could speed things up with tractors or increase our yield with a few chemicals, but when it comes to making good whiskey, some things just can’t be rushed.

A good team of mules are hard workers. Sometimes they’re slow, sometimes stubborn, but dedicated to getting the job done.

This is the second year we’ve teamed up with the Middle Tennessee Mule Skinners Association to disc our organic corn fields. Twelve teams came out Saturday and helped make farming look easy. The field they disced will become the corn that makes our authentic Tennessee Moonshine.

If you missed this year’s discing, be sure to come to our grand opening Saturday April 21 for free mule wagon rides, tours and Moonshine tasting. You can also catch a performance by the Tennessee Mafia Jug Band. And if the timing is right, we’ll have a few bottles of Shine for you to take home a genuine taste of this unique Tennessee experience.

Wanda Thompson and her son Aaron Thompson show off their cranberry-pecan Moonshine Cookies at The Blue Porch.

Some things are just meant to be, like Moonshine infused icing on a blue berry bread pudding. If that sounds amazing, wait until you take a bite of this and other tasty treats being whipped up in The Blue Porch at the Art Center of Cannon County.

Owners Wanda and Aaron Thompson have taken our authentic Tennessee Moonshine to a whole new level by baking it into cookies, soaking it into oatmeal cake and drizzling it in icing over two different types of bread pudding.

By the time I showed up to do some research yesterday, it looked like half of Cannon County had already decided the blue berry bread pudding is a hit. There was none left, and I could see why. It’s the one treat with the most distinguishable taste of Short Mountain Shine. You can taste it in the cookies if you know what to look for. Like with most baking, there isn’t any more alcohol in these than there would be cooking with extracts.

Short Mountain Distillery is a sponsor of the April 13-28 performance of Mitch Albom’s Duck Hunter Shoots Angel at the Arts Center. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time to stop by The Blue Porch and take home a genuine taste of Cannon County!

Video from our Spring Planting 2011 at Short Mountain Distillery.

Saturday morning April 14 starting around 10, bring the family and a couple of lawn chairs out to the distillery to watch us disc our organic corn fields with 12 mule teams from the Middle Tennessee Muleskinner’s Association.

We had so much fun discing the fields last Spring with mules that we decided to do it again this year. It might take a little longer to get done, but every thing about it just feels right to us. See y’all Saturday!