Jump to content

Jack of All Nations


bourbonmed
This topic has been inactive for at least 365 days, and is now closed. Please feel free to start a new thread on the subject! 

Recommended Posts

It seems possible they are confusing the words whiskey and bourbon in this article

The state (Tennessee) has become America's largest exporter of bourbon

does not seem plausible.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

IMHO, the reason is Jack Daniels (Brown Forman) marketing. The ads are subtle and laid back, but ubiquitous. They have created an image that customers want to buy in to.

Tim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

... an image that customers want to buy in to.

Yep. At least that's how they got me. I drank the stuff, albeit infrequently, for 30 years. The image and an early, bad experience with bourbon are the only reasons I can think of. (A distillery tour about 25 years ago still lives vividly in my memory.)

I can still drink Gentleman Jack and JD Single Barrel, but I actually dumped the remainder of a bottle of No. 7 a few months ago. I reached that decision only after failing to finish a single pour on half a dozen occasions.

Yours truly,

Dave Morefield

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I truly believe Jack Daniels and even JD Single Barrel would benefit greatly from a few more years aging. While the astringency of Jack Daniels suits mixing with cola and other soft drinks, we here in Bourbonia who like to take whiskey neat or with a little water or ice need often a heavier-bodied, more aged taste to satisfy the palate. The JD Single by virtue of being unmingled and higher proof is a good dram. I think it would be much better at, say, 8-10 years old. It surprises me the company does not offer an older whiskey as a line extension: imagine a Jack Daniels confected along the lines of the same company's superb Birthday Bourbon (so it is not as if they don't know how to do it). Old photos of Jack Daniels bottles show that at one time fairly long-aged Jacks were available. I have mentioned a photo in a Michael Jackson book of a 21 year old Jack Daniels. I believe all current iterations of Jack issue at about 5-6 years old. Great whiskey needs to be older that, in my view. Jack is a fine and distinctive product but it can't claim to be a gustatory classic along the lines of Birthday Bourbon, Weller Centennial, the Van Winkle whiskeys or other such luxury drinks often discussed on these boards.

Gary

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I actually dumped the remainder of a bottle

DSOB, don't dump it, no matter how bad. Just put it to use in the kitchen. works well in dessert sauces, marinades, BBQ recipes, etc. smile.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DSOB, don't dump it, no matter how bad. Just put it to use in the kitchen. works well in dessert sauces, marinades, BBQ recipes, etc.

Seriously!? I've always used the same philosophy with distilled spirits that you're supposed to use with wine: don't cook with it if you wouldn't drink it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey, is JD all that bad for, say, Spaghetti sauce? smile.gif

Well, probably not, but all I can tell you is you have to ask yourself what flavors you're actually adding. If you dislike JD, will you like the added flavor(s) it adds to the sauce? But you're right--in a thick sauce it would probably be camoflauged so much that it wouldn't matter. But if so, does the JD really help?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

OCO,

don't cook with it if you wouldn't drink it.

Absolutely... toast.gif

The basic flavor of the Bourbon is all that's left once the alcohol is cooked out. If you didn't like that to begin with, it most likely won't enhance your food.

Bj

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Jack Daniels success in MOHO is clearly attributed to customer interaction. No other brand has as much fun with their customers. The Tennessee Squires Club (of which I am a new member) is one example of this connection between the company and the consumer. Other examples are the JD BBQ Cook-off, the JD product newsletter and their sponsership of various events. They relate to everyone from buisness execs. to the rednecks (my catagory) at the back yard BBQ. It's simple salesmanship. It works for Jack the same way it works for Bud. I drink both. toast.gifdrink.gif

Cholly

"be seen drinking what you like, not what you'd like to be seen drinking"

soapbox.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jack Daniels... No other brand has as much fun with their customers.

I agree! My wife and I have been on most of the bourbon distillery tours. Most of those were pretty good. However, we got the best tour and tour guide at Jack Daniels distillery, at our one and only visit. The tour guide was so funny and so knowledgeable! We had wished the tour would have lasted all day, or maybe two days! The tour guide even made me want to start drinking Jack. But, when I got home and decided to try Jack, again, I remembered why I didn't like it. puke.gif

I think the charcoal filtering takes out the taste! There is something missing, or something distasteful that is added to Jack. Would I drink it with Coke? You bet! Neat? No, thanks!

Getting back to the tour... Everything was perfect! The distillery, the tour guide, the visitor's center, the little town down the street, etc. And you have to admit it; their logo is the most familiar one, possibly, on Earth!

Thank goodness Van Winkle (and many other brands) doesn't get that popular, or we might not be able to buy any of these fine products! toast.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I've detailed elsewhere, my experience at J.D. back in the 1970's was very similar to yours. For years afterward I actually thought I liked No. 7.

Today I find it not lacking in taste, but distasteful (oily licorce?). Surprisingly, I still enjoy Gentleman Jack somewhat and J.D. Single Barrel a lot -- almost enough to justify the price, but not quite. I finished my first bottle a while back, and so far I haven't been tempted to replace it.

Yours truly,

Dave Morefield

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you tend to like lighter whiskey, I'd suggest the Gentleman Jack. If you prefer a real mouthful of flavor, then the more expensive Jack Daniel's Single Barrel may be more to your liking.

JDSB is one of the few upper-shelf liqours that I've been able to try in a bar before making the commitment that buying a bottle (priced in the mid-$30 range around here) entails. Perhaps you will find that you can do the same.

I really and truly intended to post tasting notes before I finished that bottle, but I could never get a handle on it. Most of the time the dominant flavor was dark fruit, like plums and cherries.

Yours truly,

Dave Morefield

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never really cared for JD black the few times I've tried it. frown.gif I do like JD single tongue.gif, which tastes like the same flavor profile as JD black IMHO, but higher quality. My favorate is Gentleman Jack drink.gif, which tastes like a whole different whiskey to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As it has been since 1866, every single drop of Jack Daniel's, seven million cases a year, is made here in Cave Spring Hollow, amid the gentle hills about 75 miles south of Nashville.

Whiskey's Kingdom (Pop. 361), NYTimes, 3/17/04

Not precisely true -- Prohibition was the law in Tennessee before it became the law nationwide. During the interim, Jack Daniel's production moved to St. Louis for a brief number of years (which I'm too lazy to look up).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tim, you might e-mail the NYT imes reporter. I've corresponded with newspaper writers frequently about such things and find they truly appreciate it. They take a puff piece from a firm, make a few calls, and then assume it is true. The NYT is usually very good about fact checking but unless they know Mike Veach or Chuck Cowdery they don't know who to call. Of course I am assuming YOUR facts are correct. I've not followed the JD history. -- Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tim's right, and when the St. Louis distillery burned down, they moved to Alabama, which is where they were when National Prohibition shut everyone down (except the people who went to Mexico or Canada).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Jack Daniels success in MOHO is clearly attributed to customer interaction. No other brand has as much fun with their customers. The Tennessee Squires Club (of which I am a new member) is one example of this connection between the company and the consumer.

The thoughts expressed on this thread, in my opinion, tie loosely into both the recent distillery tour discussion as well as the discussion of the "psychology" of taste.

Before I liked bourbon, I liked Jack. I genuinely liked the taste, but I will freely admit that I responded to the marketing/image. Hey, if Keith Richards liked it, it had to be cool!

As time went on, I grew a little more objective regarding the taste. Jack was still #1, but I tried other things. The first year we were married (1993), Tina and I went through a very short-lived scotch phase before deciding that American whiskey was better and cheaper. Eventually, we got interested in touring the JD distillery because we heard so much about it. We went in the fall of 1994 and had a GREAT time.

That's when the second phase of JD marketing started working on us. Whipped into a JD frenzy by the tour, we bought our first special bottling (Jack in the Box). Subsequently, I joined the Tennessee Squire Association and have been enjoying the mailings for the last 9 years. The deed to my "plot of land" and the accompanying photo hang in our whiskey room. We have amassed various trinkets, promos and souvenirs. We have a JD bar stool, JD rail mat, and even a used JD barrel. We have the recent series of gold medal bottles, all registered with certificates on display. You hit the nail on the head - JD makes drinking and collecting JD products fun.

Recently, I named Gentleman Jack as probably being one of my top three favorite whiskeys. Do I like the taste that much? Yes. How much has my buy-in to the JD mystique and marketing influenced that perception? Hard to know, but I bet a lot.

With bourbon, I feel less influenced with the possible exception of Wild Turkey. I'll never forget that WT was introduced to me by a friend as "Hunter S. Thompson's favorite whiskey." WT has the Rare Breed Society, the opportunity to get personalized labels, intermittent correspondence, etc. Not as well done (marketed) as JD, but well done. Though not consistent with everyone's experience here, we also had a GREAT tour of WT in 1997. And guess what? Kentucky Spirit is in my top three whiskies, too. Just a coincidence? I wonder.

Obviously, JB markets well, too, and I am a big fan of Booker's and Baker's. I just think that, for whatever reason, the JB style of marketing doesn't work quite as well on me. Or maybe it's that I tried for about a year to join the KY Bourbon Circle by calling a phone number or mailing something in and didn't receive anything while JD and WT kept sending me stuff!

Hmmm. That reads like a confession of sorts. Maybe I'm asking for forgiveness from Bourbonia for being such a marketing-susceptible whiskey drinking sheep. blush.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

IMHO, the reason is Jack Daniels (Brown Forman) marketing. The ads are subtle and laid back, but ubiquitous. They have created an image that customers want to buy in to.

Tim

This is true, and they are using their popularity as a mask, to dropping the proofage and raising the price at the same time. JD is arguably, if not, the most popular whiskey on Earth - to drop the proofage and raise the price... They are trying to rip us off, plain and simple.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I totally agree with that and I try to point out the lower proof and higher price to every customer that comes in asking for JD.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.