Dickel celebrates 50 years

CASCADE HOLLOW -- The George Dickel Distillery, located near Normandy, just across the Bedford County line in Coffee County, marked the 50th anniversary of its modern incarnation on Thursday evening with an invitation-only event on the grounds including a concert by country music star Darryl Worley, who is a celebrity spokesman for the Dickel brand.

"It represents a piece of American history," Master Distiller John Lunn told the assembled guests.

George Dickel began his original distillery in 1870, at a site three-quarters of a mile away from the current building. Dickel operated the distillery until his death in 1894; his wife's family continued it after that. Tennessee enacted a statewide prohibition on alcoholic beverages in 1909, a decade before the federal law. The Dickel operation was moved to Hopkinsville, Ky., and eventually closed by Prohibition when it became a federal law.

In 1958, the Schenley company, which by then owned the Dickel name and trademark, dispatched Ralph Dupps, a distiller at its Kentucky operations, to open a new George Dickel distillery in Tennessee. Dupps acquired 850 acres of land, researched Dickel's original recipes and techniques, and worked to get the state's permission to open a new distillery.

Ralph Dupps Jr., who spoke at Tuesday's ceremony, recalled his friends from Kentucky giving him dire warnings about what to expect in the hills and backwoods of Tennessee. But he said he and his family loved their new home. The senior Dupps was promoted in the Schenley organization and eventually worked out of Louisville and New York, but his heart was still home in Cascade Hollow and he eventually asked to be sent back to the distillery he had built, where he finished his career.

A sugar maple tree was planted on the distillery grounds in memory of Ralph Dupps. Dupps' widow Martha, Ralph Dupps Jr. and Lunn ceremonially dumped shovels of earth on the tree during Thursday night's celebration. Sugar maple is used to produce the charcoal used to filter George Dickel whisky.

Lunn is only the third master distiller in the modern facility's history, following Ralph Dupps and Jennings D. Backus.

Today, the Dickel brand is part of beverage giant Diageo.

The water used to produce the whisky comes from Wartrace-owned Cascade Spring. Earlier this year, when turbidity conditions and changing municipal water treatment regulations caused Wartrace to stop using the spring for its municipal water supply and to begin buying its water from Tullahoma Utilities Board, the town worked with the distillery to ensure that it would still be able to use the spring water.

"Wartrace realized what our Cascade water source means to us, and the quality of our whisky," Lunn told the Times-Gazette. (Dickel prefers the spelling "whisky," without an "e," while the Jack Daniel Distillery uses the spelling "whiskey" in its labeling and promotion.)

Both the George Dickel and Jack Daniel distilleries market themselves as tourist attractions, in many cases causing visitors to travel through Bedford County on their way to Cascade Hollow or Lynchburg. The Dickel distillery offers tours and has a gift shop and visitor center across the street from the main building.

Lunn called scenic Cascade Hollow the best part of his job.

"You start with the location," he said, "and it gets better from there."