Jack Daniel’s Distillery sits in the small town of Lynchburg, Tennessee, where Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel established his operation back in 1866. You’re looking at America’s oldest registered distillery, sprawling across 280 Lynchburg Highway in a town with just 361 residents. The red-brick buildings and white columned offices have been making Tennessee whiskey for over 150 years, with the same Lincoln County Process that filters every drop through sugar maple charcoal before it goes into barrels. Jack Daniel was just 13 when he started learning distilling from a local preacher and his enslaved distiller, Nathan “Nearest” Green, who became the first master distiller after Jack took over. The operation stayed in Jack’s hands until his death in 1911, when his nephew Lem Motlow took the reins. Today, master distiller Chris Fletcher oversees production, following the same recipe and process that’s been unchanged since Jack’s time. They’re making Old No. 7, Gentleman Jack, Single Barrel, and Tennessee Honey in copper pot stills, with every barrel aging in rickhouses on the property. You’ll walk through working production areas where they’re mashing, fermenting, distilling, and charcoal mellowing whiskey every day. The tour guides know these buildings and processes inside out, taking you through rickhouses that smell like oak and vanilla, past the cave spring that’s been the water source since day one. It’s not just a museum – this is a working distillery producing millions of cases annually, and you can taste the difference between their expressions right where they’re made.