The brand has frequently stuck to the story of how a preacher turned moonshiner called Dan Call taught a young Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel everything he knew about making sour mash Tennessee whiskey, though it appears that that version of events was an oversimplification.
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The real story-one that Jack Daniel’s is now embracing in its marketing and social media efforts-is that it wasn’t Call, but rather Green, one of Call’s slaves, who helped Daniel get started in the distillery business.
“Traces of German, Scots-Irish and English distilling traditions are evident in the American style, but there’s much that can’t be traced to an earlier source – a gap that slave traditions might fill”, said whisky historian Mike Veach.
The Lincoln County process, a Jack Daniel’s tradition in which unaged whiskey is passed through maple charcoal to purify the bourbon, was credited to white Tennessean Alfred Eaton, however experts say the technique more likely came from slaves that used charcoal to remove impurities when illicitly brewing their own alcohol. Epps said: “As we dug into it we realised it was something that we could be proud of”.
While Epps said that he did not believe it to be “a conscious decision” on the part of the company to ignore Green’s role in its history, Peter Krass, who wrote the Daniel biography Blood and Whiskey, said that its move to include Green is part of a trend toward making its history “glossier” throughout the years.
Perhaps a similar motivation lies behind the forthcoming exhibit on George Washington and slavery, at the Mount Vernon home of the first president. Though slave owning was not as common there as it was farther south, by the 1800s many successful farmers had at least a few slaves, who tended to be closely involved with whiskey production.
It would not have been unusual for Call to rely on slave labor for his whiskey operation in antebellum Tennessee.
Three slaves worked at the average distillery, Dunaway wrote.
Mike Veach, a whiskey historian, said the influence of enslaved African distillers may explain a mystery in the development of American whiskey. In the book, Call reportedly tells his slave (Green) to teach Daniel everything he knows.
“I heard his name around”, he said.
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Jack Daniel’s, maker of one of the finest whiskeys, has begun to publicly acknowledge the contribution of slaves to the enormity of its success.
