Jack Daniel's Trivia
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80 free Jack Daniel's trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 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.
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Q 01What did the 361 on old Jack Daniel's labels count?
Town residents
Town residents: the old label read 'Lynchburg (Pop. 361), Tenn.', and the brand kept the figure for decades while the consolidated city-county grew past 6,000 residents.
Q 02Which Louisville-based spirits company owns Jack Daniel's?
Brown-Forman
Brown-Forman began in 1870 when a pharmaceutical salesman started selling bourbon only in sealed bottles, to guard against tampering; Jack Daniel's is now the flagship of its range.
Q 03What was Jack Daniel's real first name?
Jasper
Jasper Newton Daniel went by Jack; a courthouse fire destroyed the early records, so even his birth year is disputed, and his tombstone gives 1850.
Q 04Who taught the young Jack Daniel to distil, and later became the distillery's first master distiller?
Nearest Green
Nearest Green was enslaved when he taught the boy on Dan Call's farm; the company long credited Call himself, and only began telling Green's story in 2016.
Q 05Dan Call, who took in the teenage Jack Daniel and owned the still he learned on, was also what?
A lay preacher
Dan Call was a lay preacher as well as a farmer and distiller; pressure from his congregation made him quit the whiskey business, leaving Daniel to take it over.
Q 06Each October, Lynchburg hosts the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational, a contest in what?
Barbecue
Barbecue: teams cook at 'The Jack' by invitation only, and winning is the surest way back, since each Grand Champion is invited to defend the title the next October.
Q 07Biographer Peter Krass traces the "Old No. 7" name to what?
The distillery's government registration number
Biographer Peter Krass traces the name to the distillery's government registration number, 7; when the federal district was redrawn it became No. 16, but Daniel kept the familiar 'Old No. 7'.
Q 08Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire gets its kick from which spice?
Cinnamon
Cinnamon gives Tennessee Fire its kick, yet for all the heat in the name the distillery says it is best enjoyed chilled.
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 St. Louis World's Fair gave Old No. 7 its gold medal in 1904, late in Daniel's working life: within three years, in failing health, he had handed the distillery on.
Q 10In the oft-told tale, what gave Jack Daniel the injury that supposedly led to his death?
Kicking his safe in anger
Kicking his safe in anger, the tale goes, broke Daniel's toe when he forgot the combination; the company dates the kick to 1906, and his biographer doubts it was what killed him five years later.
Q 11Which pop star's 2009 hit has her brushing her teeth 'with a bottle of Jack'?
Kesha
Kesha sang the line in 'Tik Tok', and when the song passed a billion streams in 2024 she celebrated by actually brushing her teeth with Jack Daniel's on camera.
Q 12To whom did Jack Daniel give the distillery in 1907?
His nephews
His nephews took over in 1907, when Daniel, in failing health and with no wife or children, handed the distillery on; Lem Motlow then ran it, on and off, until 1947.
Q 13In the 1870s, Jack Daniel's home town of Lynchburg was a regional trading centre for which animals?
Mules
Mules made Lynchburg a market town because it sat at the centre of a farming triangle formed by Tullahoma, Shelbyville and Fayetteville.
Q 21Why is the water from the distillery's cave spring considered ideal for whiskey?
The limestone removes iron from it
The limestone removes iron from it: iron-heavy water gives whiskey a bad taste, and the spring flows from a cave at the base of a limestone cliff.
Q 22Jack Daniel's fills each barrel only once; which of these then reuses its barrels?
Scotch distillers
Scotch distillers buy the used barrels, as do brewers and hot-sauce makers; bourbon and Tennessee whiskey must by law go into brand-new barrels, so each one serves a single fill.
Q 23Moore County, home of the Jack Daniel's distillery, is what kind of county under Tennessee law?
Dry
Q 14Jack Daniel's has long been sold in a bottle of which distinctive shape?
Square
Square bottles were Daniel's own choice: he meant the shape to convey fairness and integrity, and the bottle itself is now a registered trademark.
Q 15Why did Jack Daniel's stay shut after Prohibition ended?
State ban
State ban: Tennessee kept its own prohibition after national repeal in 1933, so Lem Motlow won a seat in the legislature and campaigned until Moore County voted the distillery back in 1938.
Q 16Why did the Jack Daniel's distillery stop production during the 1940s?
A wartime ban on making whiskey
A wartime ban on making whiskey: the government halted it so that resources could go to the war effort, in what the company counts as the second and last shutdown in its history.
Q 17What folksy name does Jack Daniel's give to dripping its whiskey through 10-foot stacks of sugar-maple charcoal?
Mellowing
Mellowing is the company's word for the Lincoln County Process; drop by drop, the charcoal strips out harsh flavours before the whiskey ever reaches a barrel.
Q 18Which grain makes up 80% of the Jack Daniel's mash?
Corn
Corn is 80% of the mash, with two other grains making up the rest; bourbon needs only 51%, and the distillery credits its top-grade corn with the mash's inviting sweetness.
Q 19What does "sour mash" on the Jack Daniel's label mean?
Some old mash starts each new batch
Some old mash starts each new batch, much as a baker keeps a sourdough starter going, which keeps the fermentation consistent from one batch to the next.
Q 20The barrels that age Jack Daniel's are built from which wood?
White oak
White oak staves are toasted and charred inside to caramelise the wood's sugars, which is where the whiskey gets all of its colour; pressure alone holds them together, with no glue or nails.
Moore County is a dry county: it is legal to distil the whiskey there but not to sell it, apart from commemorative bottles under a special legislative exception.
Q 24Which magazine led a petition against Jack Daniel's cut to 80 proof?
Modern Drunkard
Modern Drunkard's editor said Jack would be 'spinning in his grave'; the company replied that a magazine of that name would not dictate how it made its whiskey.
Q 25What makes Gentleman Jack unlike Old No. 7?
It is charcoal-filtered twice instead of once
It is charcoal-filtered twice instead of once, and the extra pass is why the distillery could launch it in 1988 as a smoother, 'superpremium' step up from Old No. 7.
Q 26Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey is bottled as what kind of drink?
A liqueur
Tennessee Honey is a liqueur: Jack Daniel's blended with a honey liqueur and bottled at 35% alcohol, below the 40% minimum for a whiskey.
Q 27Which famous singer was buried with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in 1998?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra kept a bottle at the foot of his mic stand and was buried with one in 1998; the distillery's story is that Jackie Gleason first recommended it to him in a New York bar.
Q 28After his death in 2015, fans campaigned to rename a Jack Daniel's highball after Lemmy, frontman of which band?
Motörhead
Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister was said to drink a bottle of Jack Daniel's a day; in January 2016 a food magazine answered the fans' campaign by renaming his usual highball 'The Lemmy'.
Q 29Which country singer wrote a song called "Jack Daniels" and later got his own Single Barrel Select?
Eric Church
Eric Church did more than lend his name to the bottling: years after the song appeared on his album Chief, he worked with the distillery's master distiller to choose its barrels.
Q 30Which Formula 1 team became a Jack Daniel's partner ahead of the 2023 season?
McLaren
McLaren signed with Jack Daniel's in September 2022, and the limited-edition bottle that followed paid tribute to both founders, Jack Daniel and Bruce McLaren.