Sazerac's First Tennessee Whiskey is Arriving This Summer

A decade after purchasing the Newport, Tennessee-based distillery that had been home to Popcorn Sutton whiskey, Sazerac is gearing up for its first-ever Tennessee whiskey release from the newly named AJ Bond Distillery. Under Sazerac, AJ Bond has been a labor of love, painstakingly undertaken by the late master distiller John Lunn and master blender Allisa Henley, whose first names inspired the “AJ” in the distillery’s name.

Lunn and Henley, both Tennessee natives, saw their careers become intertwined from the jump. They started at Cascade Hollow (maker of George Dickel) within a few months of each other in the mid-aughts, and when Lunn moved to Avery’s Trail Distillery (home of Popcorn Sutton) in 2015, Henley joined him soon after. After Sazerac acquired Avery’s Trail, Lunn and Henley stayed on and were given free rein to develop AJ Bond’s identity from the ground up. Over the next several years, they did just that.

Tragedy struck in 2023: Lunn unexpectedly passed away, leaving Henley without her whiskey partner of nearly two decades. But Henley says Lunn’s legacy will live on in the coming whiskey. “When we started this brand, we came up with every single decision together,” she says. “His presence will always be there, and not a day goes by that I don’t consider every decision in terms of whether it’s something John would approve of or question.”

In making AJ Bond, Henley and Lunn knew they wanted the whiskey to feature a quintessential Tennessee technique: the Lincoln County Process. “The vision is that anything that’s released in the future with the AJ Bond name will go through charcoal filtration,” says Henley. “So, while we might change the mashbills, use different grains, and experiment with aging, we will always stay true to our Tennessee roots.”

Avery’s Trail wasn’t outfitted with equipment for the Lincoln County Process, so Sazerac modified the distillery’s pot stills—two 2,500-gallon stills and one 1,500-gallon still—to account for charcoal filtration. Those stills started producing whiskey in 2017, making the oldest AJ Bond distillate about 9 years old. A column still was added in the fall of 2021; Henley says this melding of pot and column still distillate will be a mainstay of the distillery's whiskeys.

The first AJ Bond release, a straight Tennessee whiskey, arrives this summer. Sazerac famously doesn’t share the details of its mashbills, so those remain a mystery, but Henley notes that the distillery is sourcing its corn from a farm in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, while its rye and barley come from farther north. In another Tennessee twist, the distillery is using Tennessee oak for maturation. “It was so important that we stay linked to Tennessee when we could,” Henley explains. “Tennessee is ingrained in us, and we really wanted that to come through in the product; using Tennessee oak is another way to make this as authentic to Tennessee as we can." The whiskey won’t have an age statement—Henley wants to bottle to flavor profile, as opposed to pigeonholing the distillery to specific ages—but she notes that there will be a good amount of 8 and 9 year old liquid in the first release.

In the wider Tennessee whiskey industry, AJ Bond joins a few major names, Jack Daniel and Cascade Hollow among them, as well as numerous craft distilleries. Henley says that, size-wise, AJ Bond falls somewhere in the middle; it’s quite a bit bigger than the craft outfits, but has about half the production capacity of Cascade Hollow. Going forward, Sazerac will likely build out a new brand home for AJ Bond. “We own 55 acres in Murfreesboro, and one day in the future we’d like to have a distillery, warehouses, and visitor center,” says Henley. “That remains our long-term goal, but it’s not a focus. Right now, we’re concentrated on getting the whiskey in the bottle, and on shelves, and driving home what makes Tennessee whiskey special."

While Henley has forged ahead without Lunn at her side, she’s certain that he would green-light the coming AJ Bond whiskey. “We’re doing it for John, because we would want him to be proud,” she says. “And I know he would be.” The arrival of the whiskey also represents a full-circle moment for Sazerac. While the company had never owned a Tennessee whiskey until now, Buffalo Trace made the George Dickel recipe for several years after Prohibition, during a period when Tennessee had its own teetotaling laws in place.