George Dickel

George A. Dickel & Co.

Type	Tennessee whiskey
Manufacturer	Diageo
Country of origin	Tennessee, United States
Introduced	1877
Alcohol by volume	40% 43% 45%
Proof (US)	80 86 90
Related products	Diageo PLC

George Dickel is a brand of Tennessee whiskey that is distilled, mellowed, and aged in Cascade Hollow, Tennessee, near Tullahoma. The brand name is also used for a rye whiskey. The brand is now owned by Diageo PLC. Its distillery is part of the American Whiskey Trail and offers tours to the public.

The brand's labels use the traditional Scottish spelling of whisky, as opposed to whiskey, although the latter spelling is more common in American English. According to the company, this is because Dickel believed his product to be as smooth and high in quality as the best Scotch whiskies.

Five whiskies are produced under the George Dickel brand:

George A. Dickel was born in Germany in 1818, and immigrated to the United States in 1844. He founded a retail business in Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1850s, and began selling liquor in 1861. After the Civil War, he operated a liquor store on South College Street in Nashville. In the late 1860s, he founded George A. Dickel and Company, a wholesaling firm which bought whiskey from regional distillers and distributed it in barrels, jugs and bottles. In 1871, Meier Saltzkotter, who had worked as a superintendent for Dickel, became a partner in the company. Victor Emmanuel Shwab (1847–1924), a brother-in-law of Dickel who had initially worked for the company as a bookkeeper, became a partner in 1881.

Whiskey was being produced in Cascade Hollow, near Tullahoma, Tennessee, by the 1870s, when John F. Brown and F.E. Cunningham were operating a distillery in the valley. In 1879, Matthew Sims, a local businessman, bought Brown's share of the operation. In 1883, another local businessman, McLin Davis (1852–1898), joined the partnership. Davis became the operation's distiller, and is credited with the whiskey's recipe. By the early 1890s, Cascade Whisky was one of the more popular brands in the region. The Cascade label included the phrase, "Mellow as Moonlight", which was rooted in Davis's method of cooling mash at night.