KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – Tennessee whiskey is a protected name; there’s even a state law to back that up. We traveled to several barrelhouses and toured local stills to discover what makes our stuff so special.
“Art, science, knowledge, technology; you know, there’s so much that goes into making a whiskey,” Sugarlands Master Distiller Greg Eidam told WVLT News.
There’s the cooking, fermenting and eventually distilling. These master distillers are using their heads, trusting their hearts and tossing their tails.
“There’s so much you can play with here,” Eidam said.
“Cooking the grains in the mash,” Jack Daniels Master Distiller Chris Fletcher said. “We can control things to the second to the tenth of a degree.”
From their starting proof, mash bill, still type, and age statement, distillers like Fletcher and Eidam demonstrated how much goes into four simple ingredients.
“There’s hundreds and hundreds of compounds in whiskey,” Fletcher said. “It’s a very complex mixture.”
“It’s very personal,” Eidam said. “Everyone tastes and experiences things in different ways.”
This is where University of Tennessee scientists come in, precisely measuring the chemicals that go into your brown liquor.
“Distillers could use it as a tool to make a consistent and perhaps even an improved product,” Dr. John Munafo, a food scientist and flavor expert with decades of enhancing the way things taste.
“I know we live in the day of television shows that you can just take a little sample of anything and put it in the little box,” Fletcher said. “It will tell you exactly what it is and every little thing that makes it up.”
However, science only takes you so far. The rest is the human element.
“It’s incredible how consistent of a product they make through trial and error..and tasting,” Dr. John Munafo said.
A study published in Nature found that you can distinguish one trillion different smells.
“Really can’t be measured by anything other than the human palette,” Chris Fletcher said. “That is the ultimate say-so.”
Or what you put on your shelf – big business going back hundreds of years in Tennessee.
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