Some say Jack was honouring his seven girlfriends, others that it was the 7th recipe but one of the most plausible explanations to the Old No.7 brand is the story of the missing seven barrels. In 1904, the company shipped seven barrels of Jack Daniel’s whisky to St Louis, Missouri for the World Fair. They were sent via Tullahoma on the railroad but reports were telegraphed back saying the railroad company had lost the seven barrels. So another seven were shipped, but in the meantime the railroad found the first seven, so they marked them ‘Old Number Seven’, so the barrels would not be confused when the new seven barrels arrived.

The strength of Old No.7 used to vary, with bottlings at 40, 43 and 45 alc./vol. according to different markets; with the U.S. mostly at 43% and Europe at 40%. With the onset of globalisation there was a need to consolidate, hence since 2010 the strength has been standardised across all markets at 40% alc./vol.