- [Narrator] Before it was an $18 billion industry,
before it was sold in over 67,000 bars in America
and shipped all over the world,
[dramatic music]
whiskey was forged in the backwoods of illegal stills.
- The 1860s is a time
that's kind of unique because there really
is no national liquor brand available.
- [Narrator] Until one man dreams
of marketing a brand of whiskey nationwide.
[punch thuds] [Jack grunts]
- What's your name, boy?
- Jack Daniel.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Narrator] Transforming moonshine
into a quintessential American spirit.
- Every single American spirit maker
that now is nationally available
owes a debt of gratitude to Jack Daniel.
- This is the best whiskey I've ever tasted.
- [Narrator] But he'll have to outmaneuver the law,
and ruthless competitors.
- [Jack] Anheuser-Busch is railroadin' us.
[glass breaking]
- [Narrator] To build the first great American whiskey.
- Jack Daniel was not only ahead of his time,
he was one of the founders of American branding
as we understand it.
- [Narrator] And create not only
one of the most recognizable brands in the world
[dramatic music continues]
but the whiskey industry itself.
[dramatic beat booms]
[dramatic energetic music]
[soft tense music]
[bird squawking] [tense music]
In the 1860s, on the frontier and in cities alike,
there are saloons on nearly every corner
operating under little or no government regulation.
- Alcohol was everywhere.
If you lived in a city and you were, say,
going to a market, odds were real high
you would run into someone who was drunk.
- We simply had a lot less government
because we had no income tax.
There was no federal income tax until 1913,
so we had a lot less regulation.
The government just could not get big enough
to impose itself in our lives the way it eventually would.
- [Narrator] There's no minimum legal drinking age
and people guzzle nearly four times
more liquor than we drink today.
- Some studies say the average American
drank eight gallons of hard to alcohol per person per year,
and people see cities as Sodoms and Gomorrahs.
They're filled with alcohol and prostitution
and all manner of vice.
- [Narrator] No national alcohol brands exist,
but booze is one of the most heavily-taxed products
in the country, the result of a policy enacted
to pay for the Civil War.
- In 1862, Abraham Lincoln passed
an emergency wartime revenue act.
All of a sudden the price went from 25 cents a gallon
before the Civil War to $2.25 a gallon after the Civil War.
A lotta people just said no,
and it was just kind of a recipe for people to cheat.
- [Narrator] Many distillers turn to the black market
making moonshine in secret,
then bootleggers sell it illegally
to saloons and in the streets.
- Let's face it, there's some advantages
to running an illegal business.
You're not paying taxes, there are no regulations,
and you probably have a higher profit margin
if you're not payin' the man.
[tense music]
[Jack panting] [footsteps thudding]
- [Narrator] In rural Alabama,
one bootlegger will turn himself into an American legend.
[dramatic music]
- Whoa! [grunting]
- [Narrator] If he can stay out of jail
long enough to do it.
- [panting] I can explain.
Just gimme a minute.
[tense music] [crickets chirping]
Aw, hell.
- What's this?
[dramatic music]
- Well, that's water from Eden Creek.
Supposed to be the clearest in the county.
[officer coughs]
- That water packs a hell of a punch.
What's your name, boy?
- [Narrator] His signature whiskey will one day sell
over 10 million liters a year.
His name is Jasper Newton Daniel, also known as...
- My name's Jack Daniel.
- [Narrator] And he'll spawn a brand
that will generate over $3 billion in annual sales.
[dramatic beat booms]
- Tell you what.
This one here, it's all yours. My gift.
[tense music]
- You gon' have to do better than that.
[body thuds]
[punch thuds] [Jack grunting]
[Jack panting]
- [Narrator] Despite his run-ins with the law,
Jack Daniel believes booze
can be his ticket to a better life.
[dramatic music]
[birds chirping]
But right now he works on a modest farm
owned by a Lutheran minister named Dan Call.
- Jack was orphaned so he went to go look for work
as a farmhand 'cause he needed to live somewhere,
and he was taken in by Dan Call.
Jack was a small kid, so you know as a farmhand,
he probably wasn't that useful.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] The farm grows corn
and produces medicinal alcohol
used to cure everything from shock
to fainting to snake bites.
- Distilleries were allowed to be used
for medicinal purposes.
People would prescribe an ounce of this whiskey
every few hours, which, you know, the process involved
in fermentation is the same with penicillin
as it is with whiskey.
[dramatic music]
- As a farmer it was your right to distill your crops
and to sell it as whiskey, as much as, you know,
making your fruit into jelly.
Whiskey was just a part of, of running a farm.
I think Jack Daniel discovered distilling
as a way to prove his worthiness.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Daniel helps run the still,
studying under its master distiller,
a formerly enslaved man named Nathan Nearest Green.
- Nearest Green was considered
one of the best master distillers in the area.
Dan Call specifically assigned Nearest Green
to help teach whiskey-making to Jack Daniel.
And from there they worked hand in hand.
They really did bond and have a great friendship.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] But while Daniel and Green
produce medicinal alcohol for Reverend Call...
- I trust you'll document and catalog every gallon.
[tense music continues]
- [Narrator] They also run a secret bootlegging operation,
[thunder rumbles]
selling their moonshine to saloons in nearby Alabama.
[liquor sloshing]
- Absolutely.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] In the 1860s, moonshining can be deadly,
both for outlaws like Jack Daniel
and for the people who buy cut-rate booze
with no idea what's in it.
[tense music continues]
- Moonshine is a very dangerous product
when it gets right down to it because there are no controls.
You can just add anything you want to
to give it the kick!
[fire crackling]
- This is before the FDA.
There were no rules.
You had folks who would put tobacco chew
or like tobacco spit.
They'd put turpentine in it for coloring.
They'd put all sorts of junk in their whiskey
to make it taste and look a certain way.
- People were getting sick, people were dying
because of the way these moonshiners
were manufacturing their goods.
- This is where the term rotgut comes from
because people would be buying this whiskey from whomever,
and it would literally rot their stomachs
from the inside out. [drinker retching]
[bird squawking]
[tense music]
- [Narrator] But Daniel is thinking bigger.
- Jack wanted to make the best tasting whiskey possible,
which simply wasn't something people were doing.
They just wanted access to something to drink to get drunk.
Jack Daniel really wanted to make sipping on whiskey
a pleasurable experience.
- [Narrator] And he wants to make enough money
to open a distillery of his own.
[tense music]
- The bootlegging is essential to Jack Daniel
because he needs to save every single penny he makes
in order to go out on his own.
Plus, it allows him to cement his reputation
as a great distiller.
- He was trying to expand to get into more markets.
Remember, this is all Jack knows,
so if he can't make whiskey, what is he gonna do?
[tense music]
- [Narrator] But around the country
there's a movement emerging
calling for the ban of liquor altogether, temperance.
- The excess of alcohol use begins to worry people,
particularly as America begins to industrialize.
If people can't get up and go to work
and take care of their families,
then, of course, alcohol is seen as a problem
because it's undermining the very fabric of the economy,
but also the fabric of the home.
[tense music continues]
- There was a very strong temperance movement
in the United States
connecting drinking alcohol
to the downfall of the family because men
would get their paycheck and they would go out to bars
and they would spend at the saloon all of their paycheck.
They would then, you know, run off with a loose woman.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] And soon temperance takes root closer to home.
- There you are.
I need to talk to you about things down at the still house.
- I already know what you're gonna say.
- Just hold on.
I'm shuttin' down the still for a while.
- What?
[tense music]
- Temperance accelerated in places like Tennessee
which were much more Christian,
and people were already sort of predisposed
through their particular form of Christianity
to be anti-alcohol.
- I know you're disappointed.
- No, no. - But I've made up my mind.
- No, you can't do that.
Look, if you would just listen-
- I'm shuttin' it down.
- Dan Call, who's a reverend for the church that was nearby,
and so it was a little bit of a conflict for him
because his wife was also very much a temperance woman.
- That's final.
[tense music]
- Yes, sir.
[tense music continues]
- Losing a business partner is always deeply disturbing,
and Jack had always looked to Dan
as a father figure and as a mentor.
To now lose him,
and to lose him over something like temperance,
it would've been a particular insult.
[tense music continues]
- [Narrator] Jack Daniel is suddenly out of a job
and has lost access to Call's still.
[tense music continues]
- But not only can Jack no longer make moonshine,
he has no income, and any attempt that he has made
to build and solidify a local reputation
really is for naught.
So, Jack kinda doesn't have jack.
[tense music continues] [electricity zaps]
[soft tense music]
- [Narrator] With their still falling victim
to the growing temperance movement in the 1880s,
Jack Daniel and Nearest Green's bootlegging operation
has ground to a halt.
- [Jack] I have to start over from scratch someplace else.
- [Nearest] You make it sound so simple, but it ain't.
- Jack really did want to become his own person
and his own distiller.
Distilling was where he could see himself
making a mark in the world.
You know, whiskey was his way
to kind of get beyond small town life,
and to really do something, I think, special.
[tense music]
- I'm doing this.
I want you to come with me.
- He wanted to make something that he himself
could believe in and could legitimately say
was the best whiskey that anybody ever made,
and he needed somebody would know how to make great whiskey.
- Jack Daniel very much saw Nathan Green,
Uncle Nearest, as a mentor,
and that in Jack Daniel's autobiography
he was mentioned 50-odd times throughout the book.
So, it clearly was someone that Jack Daniel
had a great deal of respect for.
[tense music]
- It's up to you.
You wanna come work with me?
- Jack Daniel specifically requested
to work under Nearest Green and learn from the best.
And it's really interesting
that although they personally were good friends,
we're still in the South and we're still dealing
with race relations and segregation.
[tense music continues]
[Nearest chuckles]
- You're damn right I do.
[Nearest laughs] [dramatic music]
You're killin' me, you know that, right?
[dramatic music pulses]
- [Narrator] In 1884, despite the rising tide of temperance,
Jack Daniel doubles down,
investing every penny he's ever made
to open a legal, licensed distillery,
with Nearest Green as master distiller
and Nearest's son George to help run the operation.
- It's absolutely important to recognize
Nathan Green's story in the Jack Daniel story.
It acknowledges the African American role
and our participation in building up the whiskey industry
here in America.
We know that we were a part of the story from the beginning.
- [Narrator] Now unlike their illegal bootlegging operation,
their new whiskey will be taxed.
So they know they need a new and improved recipe,
one so good it can be charged at a much higher price.
- Jack Daniel saw the potential in American whiskey.
He felt Americans deserved
and he could make something better.
He knew that a quality whiskey product had the potential
to become a nationally beloved brand.
I mean, he is the first of his kind, the idea of realizing
that if I want to drink it, other people will.
- [Narrator] To make the recipe,
they use a unique step in whiskey production
called the Lincoln County Process.
- Jack Daniel was not a master distiller.
Enter Nathan Nearest Green,
who actually was not only a master distiller,
but he was acquainted with the Lincoln County Process.
[soft tense music]
- Mm.
- In West Africa, in order to get clean water,
they filter it through charcoal.
Nathan Green mastered and included that principle
of running moonshine through charcoal maple
to strip some of that bite,
to strip some of that harsh flavors and mellow it out.
- And so, through the Lincoln County Process,
you take out the burn, the harshness,
all of the particulate
so prevalent in backwoods moonshine,
and you create something that is pleasurable to smell
and pleasurable to drink.
- That's not bad,
but it ain't perfect.
More time in the barrel it is.
[dramatic music] [glasses clinking]
- [Narrator] To further enhance the taste,
the pair opt to continue aging their whiskey
in charred oak barrels.
- [sighs] Okay, boys.
To your good health.
[tense music]
- Although whiskey was a thing back in those times,
[Jack exhales]
it had not been perfected over the generations yet.
So, I think it would've been a little bit harsher,
a little bit higher proof.
[Jack breathing heavily]
- Dry spice, vanilla, hint of smoke, sweet finish.
[exhales] But it's strong as hell. [chuckles]
- [Nearest] Mm-hmm.
- [Narrator] As a final touch,
their high-proof whiskey is cut with water
sourced from a natural spring in a nearby cave.
- The water plays a really big role
in the production of whiskey,
and that's what makes Tennessee whiskey
so amazing is its use of fresh limestone water.
- That ultimately could yield something very palatable
and sort of very special.
[dramatic music]
- All right.
[tense music]
- Mm. This is the best whiskey I've ever tasted.
And it ain't close.
- I agree.
[tense music continues]
Nearest?
[tense music continues]
- I think this is it.
[tense music continues] [group chuckling]
[glasses clinking]
- All right.
- It was a rare kind of whiskey to find in the 1870s.
- [Narrator] Jack Daniel's whiskey
is finally ready to hit the market.
All he needs is for customers to give it a chance.
[dramatic music]
- During that time frame there wasn't
a real market or regulated business around whiskey.
Everybody made it, everybody sold it,
and you can get it anywhere.
- He was out to make something that really stood out.
It wasn't just making good whiskey,
but Jack could go and say, "This is fine whiskey
made by my good friend Nearest Green
and that's what makes it special."
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
- [Narrator] But the initial launch is dismal.
The local market is unwilling to pay a premium
for Jack Daniel and Nearest Green's signature whiskey.
- As a distiller, you are responsible for the cost
that the federal government will get
from the excise tax on that whiskey.
And there are a lotta people who,
if they're given the option between moonshine
and a Tennessee whiskey, they're gonna choose moonshine.
- At this point in history,
moonshine isn't really known for nuanced flavors.
It's just kinda there to get you drunk.
Corn-forward spirit, very, very harsh.
So now imagine in the very same region
where that's the alcohol you can drink,
you suddenly get something with sugar notes,
maple notes, toasted notes that is smooth.
You can sip it, sip it over ice.
It's gotta be like night and day.
- I think Jack Daniel bet his career on making good stuff
as opposed to cheap stuff.
- [Jack] Reverend.
- [Narrator] Then Daniel gets
an even more devastating piece of news.
- What?
No. No.
- Jack.
[ax thudding] [dramatic music]
- [Jack] Get out!
[dramatic music continues]
- [Narrator] In 1890 before the whiskey
they created together even gets off the ground...
- The righteous perish and no one takes it to heart.
- [Narrator] Jack Daniel loses his friend
and mentor Nearest Green.
- The devout are taken from us
and no one understands the righteous are taken away
to be spared from evil.
Those who walk upright-
- I think Nearest Green's death
impacted Jack Daniel greatly.
[dramatic music]
Not even from a business standpoint,
but from a personal standpoint.
He lost his friend, he lost his teacher,
and he lost his partner in business.
And so I'm quite sure that Jack Daniel
was devastated when Nearest Green died.
- Jack Daniel learned to distill from Nearest
and that's what made his whiskey good,
and I think Jack Daniel would not have wanted
to work with anybody else.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Narrator] If Jack Daniel was going to find a way
to revolutionize the whiskey industry
he was going to have to do it on his own.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] As the 20th century approaches,
Jack Daniel is now on his own and his potential customers
continue to choose cheaper moonshine
over his new premium whiskey.
- None of these are good enough.
- [Narrator] So he turns an eye towards marketing,
starting with the bottle it's sold in.
- Back in those days, the bottles, they were jugs.
They were any sort of, you know, container
that folks could just go and get a refill essentially
of their own whiskey and then take it home.
There wouldn't be, you know, this iconic labeling involved.
[tense music continues]
- I want more options on my desk by Monday.
- You got it.
- [Narrator] Jack Daniel is totally re-imagining
his whiskey's image,
[dramatic music]
not just with new packaging,
but a legend he can sell along with it.
- We perceive that distillers have been these guys
in seersucker suits sitting on a porch
somewhere in Kentucky sipping on a mint julep,
when, in fact, distillers have always been
the marginalized people of society.
[tense music]
First it was slaves, then it was people who,
for whatever reason, mainstream society had said,
"We don't wanna do business with you."
Jack Daniel is the picture of this.
- [Narrator] Jack Daniel transforms himself
from a rough-and-tumble orphan
into the quintessential Southern gentleman.
And in 1895, he debuts a new signature bottle
to evoke a square deal.
[tense music continues]
- A square bottle in a sea of round bottles
or oval bottles or circular bottles is easy to pick out.
[tense music]
- It was different and you could pack more
to a case and was maybe sturdier.
So, it was a clever innovation,
and one that has obviously stuck till today.
- The Jack Daniel's label is iconic.
Black label, white lettering, with the No. 7 on it.
That No. 7 has its own meaning.
Some say it was a distillery,
some say it was the amount of girlfriends he had,
or it was his seventh recipe.
- [Narrator] Now armed with his signature look
and the iconic bottle that still bears his name,
Jack Daniel's whiskey takes off.
[dramatic music]
- Jack Daniel was not only ahead of his time,
he was one of the founders of American branding
as we understand it.
He was making a commodity, which was not branded whiskey,
it was like corn or like milk.
But Jack took that and turned it
into what we now recognize as a brand
and was one of the first to really do that
in a dramatic way and one that is remarkably persistent
and continues even now.
- I think for a lot of people,
Jack Daniel's is almost what you conjure in your head
when you think of a liquor bottle.
Everybody knows what Jack Daniel's looks like,
to some degree knows what it smells like,
what it tastes like.
[dramatic music continues]
- It was genius.
He was able to really gain popularity quickly,
and again, folks would ask, "Do you have some of that Jack?"
Like, they would ask for it by name,
which was something that was just completely unheard of
during that time period.
[dramatic music crescendos] [singers vocalizing]
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Thanks to Jack Daniel's innovative branding,
by 1903, he's selling over half a billion bottles a year
and operates the largest distillery in Tennessee.
- It's America's first true whiskey brand.
It's the whiskey with an E in the word.
It is something that is spicy,
mixes really well with things.
There's a bit of smoothness to it
that's a little bit unexpected.
But again, it's one of these things
that's beloved by working class
and aristocratic people alike.
- Daniel now sets his sights on expanding nationally,
and brings his nephew Lem Motlow into the fold.
- Jack Daniel didn't marry, didn't have any kids.
He really didn't have anybody to pass his legacy down to.
[dramatic beat pulses]
- Just inspecting the barrels.
They are old.
- Now, we say aged.
- They are in need of replacement.
[electricity zaps]
- Lem sort of presented himself to the world
in a different way from Jack Daniel's "I'm an outlaw,
renegade, I don't follow the rules" kinda thing.
- I don't want you trying to reinvent the wheel here.
[dramatic beat pulses]
- We'll continue this later.
[tense music]
- [Colin] But they were very different personalities,
and Lem was better at business.
- [Narrator] But just as Motlow joins the ranks,
the crusade against alcohol rapidly builds.
Soon, three states go dry
and the rest of the country begins to take notice.
- Individual states were putting in their own prohibitions
well before Prohibition itself actually hit.
And sometimes it even went down to county to county.
- Every single thing that Jack Daniels
has ever built is on the line.
Jack Daniels is now at risk of losing his livelihood,
his reputation, and everything he's worked for.
- [Narrator] As the idea of prohibition takes hold,
another unlikely adversary emerges, beer brewers.
[tense music]
- The beer industry, with Anheuser-Busch at its head,
really took the lead in trying
to separate themselves from distilled spirits.
Most of their advertising promoted
the good old German beer hall atmosphere
where people were singing and dancing
and having a good time, and then could go home
to their families in a relatively sober situation.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] But the ads paint
the most famous whiskey brand in the country as the enemy.
- As rohibition fever became more intense,
the beer brewers just aggressively push the idea
that they're not distillers,
which, no surprise, was infuriating to the distillers.
- Anheuser-Busch is railroadin' us.
[tense music]
- [sighs] The last thing we need right now
is to go to war with the brewers.
- There was no chance that the distillers and brewers
were ever going to come together in a united front
to try to protect each other, ever, no chance at all.
And now what are you going to do?
You are gonna have to scramble to survive.
- Maybe consider putting out a peach brandy.
- No.
- Just hear me out.
- No, it's outta the question.
- Nothin' is outta the question.
- It's my name on the bottle.
[tense music]
- Then slap somebody else's name on the label.
Hell, put mine on it.
- Lem really wanted to build a brandy distillery
'cause brandy was lower proof than whiskey.
Jack was like, "No, no, no.
We're just gonna do this thing,
and we're just gonna do this thing great,
and that's what we're about."
- So long as we keep makin' the best whiskey in the world,
suppose everything else works itself out.
- I'm just thinking about what's best for the company.
- The product is the company.
- [Narrator] Now, under attack on two fronts,
Daniel and Motlow need to get on the same page
if they're going to weather the storm
with the distillery intact.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] In 1908 with calls for a prohibition on liquor,
Jack Daniel's brash nephew, Lem Motlow,
wants to implement a risky new strategy.
- Lem would have been very threatened
by the thought of prohibition,
as were plenty of other distilleries
that were booming during that time period
because it was their livelihood.
So, they were very nervous as to how Prohibition
was going to shut that down.
- Currently our warehouses are stocked at 65%.
Now, I wanna get that to 95% by the end of the year.
- Most distillers didn't think the temperance movement
was actually going to stick.
Lem Motlow saw the end of the road coming,
and so he wanted to start ramping up production.
- We're already producing as much
as this distillery can handle.
- Which is why starting next week
we'll begin diluting the mixture by 5%.
[George scoffs]
The customer won't know the difference.
- Did you run that by your uncle?
- Lem was a little less brand protective.
Lem was more, "How do we make money off of distilling?"
and Jack Daniel was more,
"How do we make the best whiskey that money can make?"
- My uncle put me in charge.
From here on in, y'all report directly to me and only to me.
[ominous music]
Uncle Jack is many things,
but he is a man livin' in the past.
I am thinkin' about the future.
[tense music]
From here on, our top priority is expansion.
[tense music continues]
[Jack exhales]
- Get out. Now.
You, too, George.
[tense music]
Okay, let me make this crystal clear.
Quality is our top priority.
[tense music continues]
You're excused for the day.
Get out.
- [Lem] Come on, Jack, let's be a little-
- Get out! [glass breaking]
[dramatic music]
- I think Jack had serious reservations
about leaving the distillery to anyone.
If he wasn't gonna be in charge of the whiskey,
he didn't want anybody making the whiskey,
and was suspicious of Lem for reasons
that bore out over time.
[dramatic music crescendos]
- [Narrator] As Daniel and his nephew
wrestle over strategy,
[tense music] [gravel crunches]
six states have now banned the sale of alcohol.
[tense music]
- On one part, it's fear of alcohol as a sinful thing,
but also we are experiencing the Industrial Revolution,
and new ways of working are being developed.
And some of the biggest enthusiasts
behind the Temperance Movement are employers
who want workers that are showing up on time.
And that's a whole new concept, right?
You don't just show up at work at dawn.
Now we have this thing called the clock.
[dramatic music]
Half the workers don't show up on time,
the other half sort of trickle in by lunchtime.
They kick off and go have a couple beers at noon.
And so, there's a real incentive among employers
to promote temperance as something
gonna get you into heaven,
but is also gonna make you a more productive citizen
in this new industrial economy.
[tense music continues]
- [Narrator] In 1909, North Carolina goes dry,
[tense music] [bird chirping]
followed by Jack Daniel's home state of Tennessee.
Before more states could go dry,
Motlow is pushing to sell as much Jack Daniel's as he can,
but his uncle has been holding him back.
- Lem.
Can I speak to you a second?
It's important.
[tense music]
- What?
[footsteps tapping]
- [Narrator] Then, on October 9th, 1911...
- Your uncle, he passed away last night.
- [Narrator] Jack Daniel dies unexpectedly
of blood poisoning.
- I'm sorry.
[tense music]
- Thanks for letting me know.
- [Narrator] Without the man whose famous name
adorns the bottle, the future of the distillery
rests squarely on Motlow's shoulders.
- Lem had these now keys to the kingdom
that had been developed by Jack Daniel,
but the doors to the kingdom were just shut
by the Tennessee government.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] With Prohibition looming,
Lem Motlow is planning to risk everything
to cash in while he still can.
- You wanted to see me?
- Days of the five-day work week are over.
I need you and everyone else to work around the clock,
that's nights, weekends, whatever.
- That's a lot of overtime.
- I'll pay.
- By the time he took over, the temperance people,
the prohibitionists, they were already pushing
very, very, very hard against alcohol consumption
in the U.S. and it was already
definitely affecting the business.
- You can take a calculated risk
when you really know your market.
You need to be decisive,
and I think the best entrepreneurs
really have a fire inside of them,
and I think that fire can get a person
through all the adversities and all the setbacks
that can happen.
- Can I ask what this is about?
- Temperance.
Prohibition, goin' dry, whatever you wanna call it.
It's comin', and when it does, there's no goin' back.
You need to increase production.
Push the men as hard as you need to.
- And if they complain?
- Fire 'em.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] To maximize sales,
Lem starts pumping out 300 gallons of Jack Daniel's a day.
But he's playing with fire.
- It does take a special kind of risk taker
because you never know when the government's
gonna come in to shut you down.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] By 1918, the calls to ban alcohol nationwide
reach a fever pitch.
[tense music continues]
- You have the push for a constitutional amendment
to outlaw alcohol consumption or sale of alcohol.
And it's successful.
And then by 1918, you have the formal passage
of that amendment, which becomes the Volstead Act.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] On January 16th, 1920,
Congress ratifies the 18th Amendment
and alcohol becomes illegal in the U.S.,
grinding the Jack Daniel's distillery to a halt.
- The strategy of ramping up
backfired because he had now sunk all of this money
into a product he could no longer sell.
And so, all of the capital that they had was in danger.
And so, Jack Daniel's started to really teeter on the edge.
- [Narrator] Motlow has spent the last few years
cranking out whiskey at a breakneck pace,
and he's sitting on 50,000 gallons of it in his warehouse.
[tense music continues]
- That was kind of the moment
that everything sorta crashed in around him.
At that point, he had no idea how he was gonna,
you know, run his business.
- [Narrator] As Prohibition takes hold,
Lem Motlow spends years
trying to keep the Jack Daniel's distillery afloat,
while other producers have figured out
how to skirt the law.
- One thing that Prohibition doesn't do
is eliminate alcohol.
It makes it a little bit harder to get it,
makes it a little bit more expensive,
but anytime something that people want is made illegal,
it immediately creates a black market
where people who are bold enough, daring enough,
can capitalize on it.
[tense music continues]
- Because you've now pushed it underground,
you have organized crime.
Mafia bosses saw it as an opportunity.
They wanna go full blast in it, and they do,
and they make millions.
[tense music continues]
- [Narrator] At the height of Prohibition,
Al Capone's criminal syndicate alone
generates the modern equivalent of nearly $1.5 billion.
And in the depths of the Great Depression,
Americans have never been more desperate to indulge.
- America's in the worst economic depression
in its history.
Unemployment nationally is 25%.
In industrial cities like Detroit, it's 40%.
And public mood switches to a degree in the 1930s
as people realize how much they miss having alcohol around,
and how unsuccessful Prohibition is
in keeping alcohol away from people.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Finally, on December 5th, 1933,
Prohibition is repealed.
- Prohibition was repealed because of the Great Depression.
The federal government needed revenue again
and one sure place to get it was taxing distilled spirits
and alcohol generally.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Narrator] While Prohibition is repealed,
some states opt to stay dry.
[tense music]
And in Tennessee, alcohol is still illegal
in the county where Jack Daniel's is made.
So company president Lem Motlow spends years
lobbying the local government to let him operate.
- Bouncing back after Prohibition
was especially difficult for Jack Daniel
because Tennessee extended their prohibition
past the federal mandate.
[phone ringing]
- Lem had to fight a long way to get out of it.
It took him a long time after Prohibition ended
to convince Tennessee to allow manufacture of alcohol.
[phone ringing]
- Yeah?
- [Narrator] It takes five long years
before Motlow finally gets the news
that the Jack Daniel's distillery
can legally operate again.
- You're kiddin'? Thank you.
- [Narrator] When they reopen,
of more than a thousand registered distilleries
in the state before prohibition, they're the only one left.
Motlow rushes his whiskey back to the market,
introducing a one-year-aged version.
But it isn't until the company is sold to Brown-Forman
in 1956 for the modern equivalent
of nearly $113 million
that it rises again to national prominence.
Today, it's still illegal to buy booze
in the county where Jack Daniel's is made.
But with more than a hundred million liters sold annually,
it's the bedrock of a U.S. alcohol industry
worth over $222 billion a year.
- I think it's really impossible to overstate the legacy
of Jack Daniel, both as a man and as a brand.
Every single American spirit maker
that now is nationally available
owes a debt of gratitude to Jack Daniel.
- Jack Daniel, if he saw where
the alcohol industry was today,
I think he'd be impressed by what has happened to it.
And he would probably be happy
to see that he stayed relevant and stayed strong
through the '50s and the '60s and the '70s
to this giant brand it is today.
- [Narrator] Forged with the help of his friend and mentor,
Nearest Green, Jack Daniel's legacy
is the best-selling American whiskey in the world,
available in over 170 countries.
And it helped transform distilling
from barnyard moonshine to a respected
American tradition.
- Not only did Jack Daniel
buck the system in terms of the conventions
of what a whiskey could be or how it could be made,
but he bucked the system in terms of who he could work with,
who he would elevate, who he would trust and rely upon,
who he would make into a partner.
And there is no Jack Daniel's without Nearest Green,
and there is no true drinking culture in the United States
without Gentleman Jack.
[dramatic music]
- Jack Daniel's makes things cheaper and more available.
You don't have to go out to the juke joint
or to wherever to get whiskey.
You get it in your store and it looks legitimate,
just as legitimate as your tomato soup.
[dramatic music continues]