When you think of Tennessee whiskey, the first name that comes to mind is most likely Jack Daniel’s . There’s a good reason for that. The distillery’s Old No. 7 is one of the best-selling and most popular whiskeys in the world. But there are other distilleries in the Volunteer State making fantastic bottles, ranging from relatively big names like George Dickel to various craft operations. One of the best in the latter category is Chattanooga Whiskey.
Chattanooga Whiskey was founded in 2011, when it became the first distillery to get a license to make whiskey in its namesake city in about a century. The team started out by sourcing whiskey from MGP in Indiana, as so many do. But by 2015, they were making their own whiskey at the newly built Experimental Distillery, releasing an un-aged expression to start. A few years later, its Riverfront Distillery opened and production scaled up.
In recent years Chattanooga Whiskey has been putting out a series of excellent high-malt and bottled-in-bond bourbons, along with some experimental releases, that have made a big impact on the American whiskey scene.