By Richard Thomas

The old Dickel general store and post office
(Credit: Joana Thomas)

One of the pieces of fallout from the major statehouse battle of Tennessee’s state whiskey law this past March ended on Wednesday, as state authorities dropped their investigation into whether George Dickel was violating said law.

Although most media attention has been on the 2013 law sponsored by Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman, an earlier law dating to 1937 required that all liquor be made and aged in the same county. The 2013 law amended that requirement to allow for storage and aging in counties adjacent to the county of distillation. In the wake of an effort by Diageo, the parent company of George Dickel, to replace the 2013 law, Tennessee authorities launched a probe into whether Dickel was shipping whiskey out of state for aging.

George Dickel Barrel Select Whisky
(Credit: Richard Thomas)

Another piece of fallout from the March 2014 statehouse whiskey battle was Diageo filing a Federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the requirement that whiskey be aged in the region of distillation as a violation of interstate commerce provisions. As part of his testimony in that lawsuit, George Dickel Master Distiller John Lunn testified that, due to a storage shortage beginning in 2009, his distillery had shipped some 16,000 barrels of whiskey to Diageo-owned facilities in Louisville, Kentucky. However, none of the whiskey in question was used to make George Dickel, and was instead meant for use in other Diageo products or for sale to third parties.

After hearing Lunn’s testimony, Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Kyle Hixson said declared the investigation of Dickel and Diageo over, and that the state would take no action against them on the whiskey storage issue.

George Dickel has since addressed its storage deficit, completing a new $7 million warehouse in April 2013. Another new $5 million warehouse is also under construction. Diageo’s interstate commerce lawsuit is still in litigation.