100 free Jack Daniel's trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Jack Daniel's is the best-selling whiskey on Earth, and its story is stranger than the marketing suggests. This Jack Daniels trivia quiz covers the founder Jasper Newton Daniel, the enslaved master distiller Nearest Green who taught him, the nephew who ran the business through Prohibition and a murder trial, the origin of the Old No. 7 name and the square bottle, and why you cannot legally buy a bottle in the county where it is made. There are questions on the production side too: the sugar-maple charcoal of the Lincoln County Process, the mash bill, the 2013 Tennessee whiskey law, the quiet drop to 80 proof, and the labels from Gentleman Jack to Sinatra Select. Pop culture gets its round with Frank Sinatra's burial, Lemmy's daily bottle, McLaren's Formula 1 livery and the Supreme Court's Bad Spaniels dog-toy case. It suits a bar quiz, a whiskey tasting, or a Tennessee road trip. Every answer was verified against the encyclopedia entries on the brand, its people and its hometown, and each question links to its source.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jack Daniel's adverts long quoted Lynchburg's 1960s population as what figure?
361
The consolidated city-county has since grown past 6,000 people, but the tiny number is too good for the marketing to give up.
Q 02Which company has owned Jack Daniel's since 1956?
Brown-Forman
The Louisville firm also owns Old Forester, Woodford Reserve and Herradura tequila.
Q 03What was Jack Daniel's real first name?
Jasper
Jasper Newton Daniel was the youngest of ten children; his birth date is disputed between 1846, 1849 and 1850.
Q 04Who taught the young Jack Daniel to distil, and later became the distillery's first master distiller?
Nearest Green
Green was enslaved when he taught Daniel and is the first African-American master distiller on record in the United States.
Q 05Dan Call, who took in the teenage Jack Daniel and owned the still he learned on, was also what?
A lay preacher
Call eventually quit the whiskey business for religious reasons, leaving Daniel to take over.
Q 06The Jack Daniel's label says the distillery was established and registered in which year?
1866
His biographer Peter Krass argues the registration documents show the business actually dates from 1875.
Q 07According to Jack Daniel's biographer, where did the "Old No. 7" name come from?
The distillery's government registration number
When the federal district was redrawn he became No. 16, but kept the old number because the brand was already known.
Q 08In which year did Jack Daniel begin using the square bottle?
1897
The shape was meant to convey fairness and integrity, and it remains the brand's signature.
Q 09Jack Daniel's popularity surged after winning a gold medal for the finest whiskey at which 1904 event?
The St. Louis World's Fair
The glow did not last locally, as the temperance movement was gathering strength in Tennessee.
Q 10According to the oft-told tale, how did Jack Daniel get the injury that supposedly led to his death?
Kicking his safe in anger
He could never remember the combination; his modern biographer says the story is not true and he died of unrelated gangrene.
Q 11In what year did Jack Daniel die?
1911
He died of blood poisoning in Lynchburg on October 9, having handed the distillery to his nephews four years earlier.
Q 12Jack Daniel never married. To whom did he give the distillery in 1907?
His nephews
Lem Motlow soon bought out the other nephew and ran the business, on and off, for about forty years.
Q 13In which year did Tennessee's statewide prohibition stop legal distilling of Jack Daniel's?
1910
That was a full decade before national Prohibition; Motlow challenged it and lost at the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Q 21What does the term "sour mash" on the label mean?
Solids from a previous batch are mixed into the new one
It keeps fermentation consistent and is standard practice; all straight bourbon is made this way too.
Q 22Where has Jack Daniel's made its own barrels since 2014?
Trinity, Alabama
Before that the barrels came from Brown-Forman's cooperage in Louisville; new charred oak gives the whiskey its colour and most of its flavour.
Q 23Why is the water from the distillery's cave spring considered ideal for whiskey?
Q 14During Tennessee prohibition the company moved distilling to Birmingham, Alabama, and which other city?
St. Louis, Missouri
None of the whiskey made in either city was ever sold, because of quality problems.
Q 15With whiskey banned in Tennessee, what did Lem Motlow sell instead in Lynchburg's mule market?
Harnesses
He also ran for the state legislature specifically to cut the power of the county court that kept him shut.
Q 16In which year did the Lynchburg distillery reopen, five years after national Prohibition ended?
1938
State prohibition laws outlived the 21st Amendment; Motlow, by then a state senator, led the repeal effort.
Q 17In 1924 Lem Motlow was tried and acquitted for what?
Murdering a railroad porter
He shot and killed Clarence Pullis on an L&N train while trying to shoot a Black porter who had asked for his ticket; an all-white St. Louis jury acquitted him.
Q 18Why did the Jack Daniel's distillery cease operations from 1942 to 1946?
The US government banned whiskey production during World War II
Motlow restarted in 1947 once good-quality corn was available again, and died the same year.
Q 19What folksy name does the company give to dripping its whiskey through 10-foot stacks of sugar-maple charcoal?
Mellowing
The step is formally the Lincoln County Process, and the distillery grinds its own charcoal before use.
Q 20Jack Daniel's mash bill is 12% rye, 8% malted barley and what percentage corn?
80%
Bourbon only requires 51% corn; the higher share makes for a sweeter spirit before the charcoal takes the corn taste out.
The limestone removes iron from it
Iron-heavy water gives whiskey a bad taste; the spring flows from a cave at the base of a limestone cliff.
Q 24Roughly how many barrels of whiskey are ageing in the Jack Daniel's barrelhouses around Lynchburg?
1.9 million
Some barrelhouses sit on the hilltops and are visible from all over town.
Q 25Moore County, home of the distillery, is what kind of county under Tennessee law?
Dry
It is legal to distil the whiskey there but illegal to buy it, apart from one commemorative product at a time.
Q 26Which proof was Jack Daniel's black label historically bottled at until 1987?
90
It dropped to 86 and then, in 2002, quietly to 80 proof, prompting a 13,000-signature petition from Modern Drunkard magazine.
Q 27How does Gentleman Jack differ from standard Old No. 7?
It is charcoal-filtered twice instead of once
Both are 80 proof; the second pass through charcoal comes after ageing.
Q 28Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey is technically not a whiskey but what?
A liqueur
Tennessee Fire, Tennessee Apple and Tennessee Blackberry follow the same 70-proof formula.
Q 29Which famous singer was buried with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in 1998?
Frank Sinatra
The brand later released Sinatra Select at 90 proof and Sinatra Century for his 100th birthday.
Q 30In 2016 a magazine renamed the Jack and Coke 'The Lemmy' after which band's frontman?
Motörhead
Lemmy reportedly drank a whole bottle every day for 38 years.