Tennessee
George Dickel Distillery
Tullahoma
Serious sour-mash whiskey drinkers say they can tell a difference in George Dickel and other labels; they say that Dickel is more mellow and more pleasing to the taste buds. This writer says the difference, to me, is that George Dickel has no “e” in whisky, while over at Jack Daniel’s distillery, they use an “e” in their whiskey.
Rumor has it that Mr. George said that his product was as smooth as the finest Scotch whisky, thus, he spelled his whisky the same way to honor the Scotch tradition.
George Dickel opened his distillery near Tullahoma in 1870. He chose the site because he and his wife Augusta discovered that people came to the little town of Tullahoma – then a resort town – to enjoy the fine limestone water from nearby Cascade Spring. After tasting that good, pure water, George decided that his Tennessee whisky distillery would be here on the Highland Rim of the Cumberland Plateau.
After touring the Tennessee distilleries, I was amazed at the steps involved in producing the whisky and impressed with the commitment made by the distillery employees. Making whisky is what they do, and they do it well.
Through trial and error, George Dickel developed many special ways to enhance his whisky, and they’re still in place today. For example, he knew that whisky was smoother if made in the summer, thus Dickel started chilling the whisky before the charcoal mellowing process. “Mr. George” was indeed dedicated to a special mellowing process. He removed the harshness by slowly filtering the whisky through charcoal.
If there were connoisseurs of whisky-making, they were to be found in close proximity in south-central Tennessee.
