Diageo Tennessee Whiskey Law Tabled

By Richard Thomas

Drinks giant Diageo’s push to rewrite Tennessee’s new whiskey law allowing used barrel whiskey to enjoy the label of “Tennessee whiskey” has been tabled until summer amid fierce controversy.

According to The Tennessean, State Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksville) moved for the contentious bill to be sent to a summer study committee. Practically speaking, this means the original 2013 Tennessee whiskey law will stand as is until next year.

The law passed last year at the behest of lobbyists working for Brown-Forman, the owner of Tennessee’s largest whiskey producer Jack Daniel’s, enshrined the common definition of Tennessee whiskey into state law. Under that legislation, Tennessee whiskey officially became bourbon made using the Lincoln County Process, or drip filtration through maplewood charcoal. The law was enacted with little controversy, excepting the protests of Prichard’s Distillery, who do not use the Lincoln County Process and were promptly granted a “grandfather” exception to the new law. Whiskey could still be made in Tennessee without the Lincoln County Process, but could not use the specific label “Tennessee whiskey.”

This year Diageo proposed to amend the Tennessee whiskey law to allow the “Tennessee whiskey” label to include whiskey made using used barrels, as well as to be aged outside the state of Tennessee. Although the London-based drinks company portrayed their proposal as a measure defending the interests of Tennessee’s craft distillers, it met with a decidedly mixed response from the state’s small whiskey-makers, and was widely viewed in American whiskey circles as designed to protect the world’s top whiskey brand, the Diageo-owned Johnnie Walker, from it’s close competitor, Jack Daniel’s.