A sooty black fungus covers exterior surfaces near the Jack Daniels Barrel Houses in Lincoln County, Tennessee. Courtesy of Patrick Lang
- Lincoln County residents are fed up with black fungus covering their homes and cars.
- The persistent “whiskey fungus” feeds on ethanol vapor from the Jack Daniels barrel houses.
- Locals are demanding an air filtration system and an environmental impact study.
The sooty black mold smothers homes, porches, and cars, locals say. It obscures street signs and coats the leaves and bark of trees. It cements itself to any stationary object, making occupants question the safety of the air they breathe.
A runaway black “whisky fungus” known as Baudoinia compniacensis, fueled by ethanol vapor from Jack Daniels facilities, has been a threat to locals in Lincoln County, Tennessee since the famous liquor company began building six new casks has homes in 2018 and launched plans to build 14 more, locals say. Now angry residents are demanding a response from the company and the county for the damage and falling property values, and proof that the ethanol-filled air is safe to breathe.
Patrick Long, who lives right next door to the Jack Daniels Barrel homes and whose wife Christi has filed a lawsuit against Lincoln County, told Insider the community has two key demands: an air filtration system that could block ethanol emissions and stunt emissions growth fungus and an environmental impact study assessing the amount of ethanol leaking from the cask houses and any health risks.
“I’m very worried. My wife has breathing problems. One of the neighbors has cancer,” Long said. “It’s in the air. And you really, probably don’t want to inhale that. But no one has done a test to determine if it’s actually toxic.”
Long said the six existing barrel houses mean he has to spend about $10,000 a year to wash his house with a potent mixture of water and Clorox. He also said local officials had given up cleaning the fungus-ridden street signs, simply replacing them when they were too blacked out to be legible.
“If you’ve got any decent nails on you and you run them down the side of a tree or property within a quarter mile to a half mile of those barrel houses, your whole finger is going to be covered in black fungus,” Long said. “You can’t see the branches anymore. We now have to clean our house four times a year with high pressure.”
He said he alerted officials at the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, who declined Insider’s request for comment on “potential or ongoing enforcement actions or investigations.”
Christi Long’s recent lawsuit against the Lincoln County Planning and Development Department is demanding that the county issue a work freeze to halt construction of Jack Daniels, alleging that the company built the facilities illegally and lacked proper permits the site plan and the building permits.
Lincoln County did not immediately respond to insiders’ requests for comment. But at a public hearing late last year, reported by Moore County News, Jack Daniels official Melvin Keebler expressed sympathy for a resident who complained about her stage 4 lung cancer and called for an air filtration system. Keebler said the company already monitors its air quality and said the air filtration technology in place is for wineries and not whiskey and bourbon facilities.
A spokesman for Jack Daniels told Insider the company cannot comment on pending litigation, but Jack Daniels “complies with all local, state and federal regulations relating to the design, construction and permitting of our cask houses. We are committed to protecting the environment and the safety and health of our employees and neighbors.”
The “angel portion” of the whiskey feeds the fungus
Residents in Lincoln County, Tennessee have complained of damage to their homes and falling property values. Courtesy of Patrick Lang
The black mass that spreads about a mile from Jack Daniels’ barrel houses is known as Baudoinia compniacensis, a naturally occurring fungus that grows on outdoor surfaces exposed to ethanol fumes. Cask houses like Jack Daniels’ facilities can house tens of thousands of casks of aging whiskey, resulting in a percentage of that alcohol evaporating through the pores of the wooden casks and into the air – whiskey makers call this the ‘angel’s portion’ of the product.
The fungus was first identified in 2007 by researchers who determined that the “angel portion” of distilled spirits was responsible for the black mass.
Kentucky homeowners filed class action lawsuits against several Louisville distilleries in 2012, but the lawsuits were eventually dismissed. And residents in Ontario, Canada, have filed an ongoing class action lawsuit against owners of the Hiram Walker distillery in Lakeshore.
Long said when he and his wife first moved into their Lynchburg estate in 2020, they were aware of the fungus and thought it was minimal. But at the time, Jack Daniels only had two cask houses in the area. Now the company has six and is on the way to 20.
Attorney Jason Holleman, representing the Longs, told Insider that a judge is expected to decide within days whether to force the county to issue a work freeze for the new facilities.
“When we started looking at it, it turned out that they didn’t have a site plan permit or planning permission for any of the structures.”
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