Jack Daniel's Distillery
Lynchburg TN
2014

A group of ducks retiring from service at Memphis’ Peabody Hotel is moving to Lynchburg.

According to a news release from Jack Daniel’s, Peabody ducks generally retire to the farm where they were raised. But in a Wednesday ceremony, one group will walk down red and black carpets to their new home in a pond just below the distillery’s cave spring. There, the ducks will eat the same grain and drink the same iron-free water used to make Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

Legend has it that the 80-year-old tradition of letting ducks swim in the Peabody fountain is linked to Jack Daniel’s, in a roundabout way. Supposedly, the Peabody general manager left his live duck decoys in the hotel fountain after enjoying a little of the whiskey on a hunting trip.

Jack Daniel’s is owned by Louisville, Ky.-based Brown-Forman Corp.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2013/12/18/peabody-ducks-retiring-to-jack-daniels-distillery/4107869/

https://www.jackdaniels.com/visit-distillery

Lucky Ducks Migrate From Historic Hotel to Jack Daniel’s Distillery

After serving as a popular tourist attraction at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, five fortunate fowl were sent to retire at the Jack Daniel's Distillery in nearby Lynchburg.

The story goes that after enjoying too much Jack Daniel’s whiskey, the hotel’s general manager and a hunting friend loosed their live decoy ducks in the lobby fountain back in 1933.

These days, the hotel’s flock of one drake and four hens still parades twice daily on a red carpet.

Anthony Petrina currently holds the covetable title of Duckmaster, directing the march. Typically, after three months of star treatment the mallards retire to the local farm that sources them.

To make the transfer official, Duckmaster Petrina turned over his flock to Jack Daniel’s master distiller Jeff Arnett in a final parade ceremony.

Typically, that is, until last year, when five fortunate fowl were appropriately sent to the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in nearby Lynchburg. There, they joined a larger flock of Daniel’s ducks, pecking up dropped grain and partaking of the limestone cave spring water also used for the distillery’s world-famous sour mash. To make the transfer official, Duckmaster Petrina turned over his flock to Jack Daniel’s master distiller Jeff Arnett in a final parade ceremony.

By all accounts, the first round of retirees is well-adjusted. “They’ve really integrated well with the ducks already in Lynchburg,” said Jill Meyer, a representative of Jack Daniels. “By now, it’s difficult to tell which duck’s which.”

Though not all animals that live at distilleries arrive as pampered as the Peabody ducks, stories of special brewery and distillery guests aren’t altogether uncommon. Just two years ago, the Chivas Brothers in Dumbarton, Scotland, retired the gaggle of geese they’d bought during the 1950s for security against would-be whiskey burglars. More recently, the Vermont rye whiskey distillery Whistlepig has been raising Mangalista pigs on their farm.
With such stories, we’d almost hope for reincarnation as a Jack Daniel’s duck. But in this life, at least there’s whiskey.

https://modernfarmer.com/2014/05/lucky-whiskey-ducks-peabody-hotel/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard

The mallard or wild duck is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Falkland Islands, and South Africa.