Cascade Hollow Distilling Co.

Cascade Hollow Distilling Co. is the legal entity name for the distillery the rest of the world knows as George Dickel — Tennessee's second major whiskey producer, the steady-state alternative to Jack Daniel's that's been making chilled-charcoal-mellowed Tennessee whisky (Dickel spells it without the "e," British style) since George A. Dickel began producing in Cascade Hollow near Tullahoma in 1870. The distillery sits in a wooded valley in Coffee County, Tennessee, about an hour and a half southeast of Nashville and 30 minutes from Lynchburg, and the production setup is built around the limestone spring water from the Cascade Hollow valley that George Dickel chose as his source 155 years ago.

The technical signature of the brand is the chilled charcoal mellowing — Dickel filters its new-make whiskey through sugar maple charcoal stacks at refrigeration temperature (38°F), unlike Jack Daniel's which mellows at room temperature. The cold filtration produces a smoother, slightly less aggressive spirit that's the source of Dickel's softer flavor profile compared to Jack Daniel's. The brand has produced essentially continuously since the modern Dickel relaunch in 1964 under Schenley ownership, through the 1997 Guinness/Grand Met merger that created Diageo, and into the present day as a Diageo property.

The most significant modern development at Cascade Hollow was the 2018 hire of Nicole Austin as General Manager and Distiller — one of the very few women holding a master-distiller-equivalent title at a major American whiskey distillery, and the executive who began producing the elevated-tier releases (Cascade Hollow Single Barrel, Bottled in Bond, Cask Strength, the annual 17 Year, 18 Year, and limited Special Releases) that have lifted the brand's editorial reputation considerably. Austin came to Dickel from Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn (where she ran the Master Blender program) and a stint as commissioning engineer at Tullamore D.E.W.'s Irish grain distillery before that.

The Tullahoma visitor experience runs through 1950 Cascade Hollow Road — the working distillery property — with tours that include the original 1870s stone production buildings, the chilled-mellowing facility (one of the only places in the world where you can see cold-filtration whiskey production), and the on-site Cascade Hollow visitor center. Cascade Hollow makes the natural pairing with Jack Daniel's for a Tennessee whiskey trip, with both producers within a 45-minute drive of each other in the same Lincoln County / Coffee County corridor.