Tennessee Whiskey vs. Kentucky Bourbon: A Legal Distinction With an Enslaved Root

Federal law defines Tennessee whiskey differently from Kentucky bourbon. Both must be made from a grain mash predominantly corn, aged in new charred oak barrels, and produced in their respective states. Tennessee whiskey has one additional requirement: it must be filtered through maple charcoal before it goes into the barrel. The industry calls this the Lincoln County Process, after the Tennessee county where the practice originated.

The Lincoln County Process is what makes Jack Daniel's a Tennessee whiskey rather than a bourbon. It is what the distillery's marketing has centered for a hundred and fifty years. The smooth character that the advertising attributes to the charcoal filtration is the entire basis of the product's identity.

The man who developed that process and taught it to Jasper Newton Daniel was Nathan Nearest Green, who was enslaved when they met. Green was working at the farm of a preacher named Dan Call when Daniel came there to learn distilling. Green was the teacher. The filtration technique was his knowledge, passed on to his student.

After emancipation, Green worked at the distillery as a free man. The Lincoln County Process remained the foundation of the product. Green's name did not appear in the distillery's official history for most of the next century and a half.

The legal distinction between Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky bourbon, which now governs billions of dollars in annual sales and is fought over in state legislatures and federal regulatory proceedings, rests on a technique whose originator went unnamed for a hundred and fifty years. The Uncle Nearest brand, founded specifically to honor him, now produces whiskey using the same process. The credit is no longer exclusively attached to the name on the bottle.