Friday, 18 January 2013

Gnashin' and Lynchin'

 Waking in Nashville we packed up our bags (again) and headed off to the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg to get a true taste of Tennessee. Neither Casey nor I are particularly huge fans of the liquor, but Casey saw a documentary on the production process of JD and suggested we check it out. During the 90minute drive out to ol Lynchy I wiki'd JD and relayed the information back to Case, who was behind the wheel (and mostly on the right side of the road) through the magic of song, replacing Ladyhawke's lyrics with the words of Wiki. This was a lovey moment until Casey was laughing so hard he couldn't sit upright or keep his eyes open... We opted instead for singing along to the actual lyrics of Wham.

The tour was informative and interesting. I now have an appreciation for sour mash whiskey and the art and skills involved in its creation. It was interesting to compare this production process to that at Harpoon brewery... In that it was almost identical apart from the distilling itself and the final step of each process. Booze be booze yo. We were fortunate (?) enough to sample the 140 proof JD during the first part of the tour. Tastes, smells and looks more or less like lighter fluid. Not great. Thank god for the flavoursome barrels they make themselves (250 barrels/barrel maker/day!!) and age the poison in, which is what gives it it's glorious amber colour. 






We headed back to Nashville (Via a rather unexhilarating trip to Lynchburg) to get what we could out of Tennessee's capital city and home of country music. It was dark by the time we arrived there, but we managed to find a hoppin' bar with a live band, tasty brews and good grub to help us prepare for the next 3hours we would spend driving to Memphis.





However, after a couple of hours of driving we left the highway and headed slightly off route to Brownsville; the birth place of Tina Turner! There wasn't a whole lot going on out there (as you would imagine from a country town at 11pm!) so we pressed on for another few miles out to Nutbush (or to the city limits of).


After driving around for a good while, mostly in Siri-induced circles, brutal reality seeped in and our high hopes of Nutbush were shattered. Nutbush, or what we found of it, consisted solely of two old farmhouses and a dilapidated long-since abandoned tractor. And no sign identifying the city limits of Nutbush. We may have persevered in our search had we not have started freaking out about being in the middle of nowhere with iPhone battery's fading fast, and frozen ditches which surely zombie hillbilly's would be occupying and surfacing from if our little rabbit-beating hearts continued to race.


Needless to say we sped the hell out of there... But not before taking these few appropriately spooky snaps... Oh tourists.




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