JESSE JAMES DUPREE Issues Tennessee Whiskey Update - “It's Been Over A Year Now That We've Sat Dormant Because Of This Whiskey Law”

Booze, bikes and rock ‘n’ roll. That’s the plan for economic development in this otherwise sleepy town of Trimble, tucked away among the corn and soybean fields of northwestern Tennessee. The only thing standing in the way, say distillers Michael Ballard and Jesse James Dupree, is the state’s stuffy law restricting how spirits must be made so they can be marketed as “Tennessee Whiskey”. They’ve found an unexpected ally in the conservative Koch brothers, whose political muscle they hope can help persuade lawmakers to vote for repeal.

“We’re trying to get this town back on the map,” said Ballard, the grandson of a Trimble sharecropper who has built his Full Throttle distillery on the former site of the town’s shuttered cotton gin. “This law is just hindering us.”

Ballard, the proprietor of the Full Throttle Saloon in Sturgis, South Dakota, wants to bring the biker party vibe back to his Tennessee home town by catering to hot rods, custom motorcycles and live concerts on the main drag outside his distillery and visitors center. Business partner Dupree is the lead singer of the hard rock band Jackyl, famous for his raucous chain saw solos to close out sets. Last summer, he broke ground on his latest venture, a nearby distillery where he plans to make Jesse James Tennessee Whiskey. But those designs were put on ice when state lawmakers didn’t repeal the Tennessee whiskey statute they had enacted in 2013 at the behest of Jack Daniel’s, which is by far the dominant player in the category.

“It’s been over a year now that we’ve sat dormant because of this whiskey law,” Dupree said. “That’s another 30 people in this town who would be working.”

The elements of the state law most under dispute are that spirits must be filtered through charcoal and stored in unused oak barrels in order to be called Tennessee whiskey. Jack Daniel’s argues that the law establishes basic quality requirements. Ballard and Dupree disagree.

“You could run the worst whiskey in the world through charcoal and virgin oak barrels, and it will still be the worst whiskey in the world,” Dupree said.