At the turn of the 20th century, the Old City of Knoxville was a bustling commercial railway hub alive with the rich aroma of its coffee-roasting factories. The massive White Lily flour mill dominated a city block, a testament to the river town's industrial might. Trains chugged in filled with people traveling to the trade town at the mouth of the Tennessee River and departed carrying produce to far-off destinations.
Today, the Old City has transformed into a vibrant, modern neighborhood where history and modernity blend into well-preserved saloons, hipster-run dumpling shops and Knoxville's first post-Prohibition distillery, PostModern Spirits, which opened in 2017.
Tennessee whiskey — which must be made in Tennessee using the 'Lincoln County' charcoal-filtering process and a host of other requirements — is undoubtedly the best-known spirit made within the state's borders. But many of the dozens of distilleries that have opened across Tennessee since lawmakers began easing Prohibition-era restrictions following the Great Recession of 2008 are rapidly expanding the state's offerings with a distinctive pioneering spirit.
From east to west, city to city, and even within a single city, Tennessee distilleries have created opportunities to differentiate themselves rather than lean on the same old stories.
Case in point: Knoxville's PostModern Spirits, where distiller Stanton Webster manufactures craft spirits in a warehouse district of former factories turned flats.
Here, Webster distills a dizzying array of whiskeys, gins and liqueurs, including the bitter Amaro Artemisia Liqueur. All of the ingredients in the cocktails at his bar are crafted on-premise.
PostModern is a stop on the Tennessee Whiskey Trail, a tourist draw akin to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail ― a border-to-border tour of nearly 40 Tennessee Distillers Guild members.
"To show you how crazy we are, we developed the Amaro Artmesia for one cocktail in our tasting room," Webster said.
'Tennessee whiskey' is evolving
In contrast to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, Tennessee's distilleries aren't leaning on one well-known flagship product ― they're creating entirely new spirits reflecting a distinct sense of place.
Although some use traditional methods, this newer breed of distilleries does not hew to the same expectations as their Kentucky bourbon counterparts. Some are creating Tennessee whiskey, yes, but many are also creating Italian-influenced Amari, botanically distinct gins and widely accessible bottled cocktails with mass appeal — thumbing a nose at the exclusivity of some parts of the whiskey world.
"I think for those of us on the Tennessee Whiskey Trail, I think it's a pursuit of making interesting spirits," Webster said. "I think a lot of distilleries lean on showcasing the regional aspect of where they are."
One of Old Dominick's whiskeys is bottled at 90.1 proof, a nod to the Memphis area code. The Huling Station straight bourbon points to the distillery's pre-Prohibition roots when namesake Domenico Canale’s Huling Station was a railway shipping point for his spirits business.
Canale died three days before Tennessee led the way in Prohibition in 1910. Tour guides at Old Dominick like to say he died of a broken heart.
Still, Prohibition had an extraordinarily lasting impact on Tennessee, with pre-Prohibition distilleries Jack Daniel's and George Dickel not reopening until the 1940s and 1950s respectively. Distilling was only allowed in three counties ― Lincoln, Moore and Coffee.
It wasn't until 2009 that the state cleared a path for 41 additional counties to begin distillery operations.
From Knoxville to Chattanooga: TN Whiskey Trail serves top US spirits
In late summer 1970, the last train departed Chattanooga's Terminal Station. But today, outside of Gate 11 Distillery, the trains fronting the “Chattanooga Choo Choo Hilton and Entertainment Complex” mostly serve as Instagram backdrops.
Though 41 Tennessee counties were permitted to produce liquor in 2009, post-Prohibition distilling was not legalized in Chattanooga's Hamilton County until 2013. That's despite Chattanooga being well-positioned between railways and waterways and once boasting dozens of pre-Prohibition distilleries.
At Gate 11, one train car still works, but it now serves as a rickhouse, or barrel-aging warehouse. Gate 11 attracts craft distillery tourists who come for innovative spirits from founder and master distiller Bill Lee. The former research chemical and biofuels engineer settled with his wife in Chattanooga to make absinthe, rum and some of the best agave spirits in the country.
And although he's a seventh-generation Tennessean, the only proper Tennessee whiskey in that train car is a private-reserve barrel destined for a local family.
Tennessee whiskey is dominated by global juggernaut Jack Daniel's but the meaning of Tennessee whiskey is deeper and broader than that of a single brand, Lee said.
"The diversity and the creativity of the distillers here, I think it's a more exciting story than Kentucky bourbon, and of course I'm biased," Lee said. "I think that's just a single-product focus and, even though we're called the Tennessee Whiskey Trail, there's so much more going on in Tennessee, and I think that's pretty evident when you look around.
"We're trying to do something different. For a long time, it was really just Jack and George, and that was it."
Longstanding distillers still play a key role in drawing tourists to the state — Jack Daniel's Distillery continues to see about 300,000 visitors a year. The Lynchburg distillery's newer portfolios of limited and rare releases have earned accolades from the whiskey world.
According to Tourism Economics , tourists in 2022 paid eight million visits to state distilleries, more than twice Dollywood's visitor traffic and comparable to the 10.4 million tourists who visited all Tennessee state parks, including the Great Smoky Mountains, that year.
Those visits led to $3.45 billion in economic impact for the state, supporting more than 30,000 jobs and more than $441.1 million in total tax revenue.
Also helping drive tourist traffic are organized events such as Tennessee Whiskey Week, a collection of whiskey-centric festivals, dinners and tastings rolling across the state each May.
Denise Pado, a 64-year-old pediatric occupational therapist in Fredericksburg, Virginia, was one of those tourists. On a bucket-list RV trip across the country, she stopped at Chattanooga Whiskey, across the street from Gate 11. She sipped a flight of high-proof whiskey but preferred the bottled Old Fashioned, which reminded her of her dad's preferred after-dinner drink.
After trying wineries, brewery tours and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, this seemed like a natural next stop. Tennessee whiskey, with its storied history and rugged individualism, stood out in what she called "an Amazon world."
"I think I'm a tour lover," she said. "I just love to know what's going on, and I love locally made things."
Pushing the limits: Where artistry meets chemistry
Chattanooga Whiskey's Experimental Distillery, which is separate from the main distillery where the flagship whiskeys are made, is a hot-spot for Tennessee Whiskey Trail tourists searching out fig-infused high-malt bourbon, bourbon-barreled Limoncello and barrel-aged gin. The smallest batches often sell out in days.
Tiana Saul, a University of California graduate who studied world arts and cultures, became the head distiller in 2023. At 38, Saul now leads the only standalone experimental distillery in the country, joining the ranks of an increasingly diverse group of distillers and stakeholders pushing the limits of what whiskey and other spirits can be.
"A lot of these distilleries are significantly newer, and they were created in an era that lends itself to much more inclusivity," Saul said. "These aren't 100-year-old distilleries, they're 25-year-old distilleries at the most."
Chattanooga Whiskey makes a straight Tennessee whiskey, but the experimental distillery arm is poised to fill its 500th barrel.
In a quest to develop new flavors and combinations, Saul and her crew have experimented with hundreds of specialty malted grains from around the world, a few dozen different yeasts and, with their cooperage, developed at least 50 different types of barrels, all of which impart unique flavors to each spirit.
"You think of whiskey and you think of this very static thing because you're bound by certain regulations to define it," Saul said. "But within each of those regulations, there's a multitude of ways you can experiment."
Old No. 7 still a Tennessee staple
Paradoxically, much of the experimentation had been made possible by the distillery that spread a single expression of Tennessee whiskey across the globe.
PostModern's Webster lived on the eastern part of the island of Crete for six months while stationed at an archeological dig. There, he found a piece of Tennessee.
"It did not matter what size village you ended up in, there was a bottle of Old No. 7, and when they found out you were from Tennessee, guess what you got to finish that night?" he said. "I drank more Jack Daniel's in my six months in Greece than I did the whole rest of my life."
Webster also does not make a proper Tennessee whiskey; he's most proud of a nearly clear cacao liqueur made from cacao he sources from Chocolate Alchemy in Eugene, Oregon. He knows exactly how to distill the essential oils to extract a pure expression of chocolate flavor. It's alchemy in a glass.
"It captures the essence of our approach to making spirits," he said. "Mindfully crafted spirits in the intersection of artistry and chemistry."
It's a practical kind of alchemy. While whiskey takes years to age, other spirits such as his best-selling Giniferous Gin need only weeks to be ready. The citrus-forward Giniferous Gin is a financial workhorse and flies off the shelves during the years it takes whiskey to age.
Anything that gets "liquid to lips," benefits the state's distillers said Meghan Bridges, event manager for Old Dominick Distilling and Tennessee Distillers Guild president, and a willingness to lean into innovation adds a certain accessibility to the Tennessee Whiskey Trail.
"A lot of people see 'Tennessee Whiskey Trail,' and they think, 'I'm not going to do that because it's going to be nothing but whiskey,'" she said.
A rising tide lifts all boats
PostModern was one of dozens of Tennessee distilleries in a fenced-off corner of World’s Fair Park's annual Southern Skies Music Festival on Mother's Day weekend in Knoxville. The Tennessee Whiskey Experience, which brought distilleries from across the state to Knoxville as part of Tennessee Whiskey Week, represented a new collaboration with the Tennessee Distillers Guild.
There, tiny distilleries stood shoulder-to-shoulder with global brands such as Jack Daniel's, a representation of the collaborative spirit that's helped foster innovation among the state's spirits makers. There was plenty of whiskey, but some of the longest lines were in front of Junction 35 Distillery, which makes an uncannily accurate Fruity Pebbles-cereal milk-flavored vodka called Bam Bam.
Knox Whiskey Works head distiller Ryan Dickerson, shielding his eyes from the bright Tennessee sun and shouting over the nearby bluegrass band, said that, among the state's distillers, there's a notion that a rising tide lifts all boats, no matter the size of the vessel.
Dickerson said Jack Daniel's and its master distiller Chris Fletcher, who sits on the board of the Tennessee Distillers Guild, have been instrumental in helping small distilleries clear regulatory hurdles.
"They had to crawl so we can run," Dickerson said. "And I think anyone who's honest can admit that, and there's just no shame in admitting the depth of the resources they have available."
There's not much the distillery has not undertaken in its 150 years of business, Dickerson said.
"And collectively, through the Distillers Guild, we're speaking in one voice to the legislature, to different entities, we're all on the same page, and we're a lot stronger together," he said.
Off the trail in Memphis: No stories, no trains, just whiskey
B.R. Distilling Co., home to Blue Note Bourbon, is on the edge of Memphis. There are no train cars outside and no stories. It is, in fact, somewhat on the wrong side of the tracks, Blue Note Vice President Logan Welk acknowledges.
The front door stays locked. You have to ring a bell to enter. Inside, there are no stills ― Welk freely and openly admits B.R. Distilling works with Bardstown/Green River in Kentucky to produce 400-plus barrels a day. It returns to Memphis to barrel age in what Welk calls the perfect humidity for whiskey making.
This is not a stop on the Tennessee Whiskey Trail, though B.R. Distilling Co. is a member of the Tennessee Distillers Guild.
Here, there is only good whiskey. You might call it great; the Blue Note brand’s flagship straight bourbon expressions ― Juke Joint and Crossroads ― were awarded platinum medals at this year’s San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Still, they retail for $35 and $45 respectively.
It's the antithesis of the rarified, exclusive air in some Kentucky bourbon distilleries. And Welk said that's exactly what Tennessee distillers should strive for.
"I hope Tennessee goes a different direction than trying to replicate Kentucky," Welk said. "Aside from Jack Daniel's and George Dickel, if you're trying to tell the same historical narrative, it's a losing battle."
There are exceptions, such as Nelson's Green Brier out of Nashville, which has real ties to whiskey's early days, he said.
"New entrants force the old guard to change things," he said. "If it goes in the right direction, and we really control the narrative, we can expand far beyond trying to replicate what other people have done in the past."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Pioneering spirit: Beyond Tennessee whiskey to a dizzying array of spirits
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