When Patrick Long moved to southern Tennessee, he thought he had found the perfect place – a close-knit, picturesque company town.
He and his wife Christi opened a wedding venue business that thrived in the shadow of one of the most iconic corporations in the country, a 159-year-old business that markets itself on bonhomie.
But it only took a few months for Long to realize he had made a terrible mistake. That company – Jack Daniel’s – was responsible for a dark secret, it’s distillery is the source of a thick, oily black fungus that covers everything it touches.
It chokes trees, pits the paint on cars, covers road signs making them unreadable and blackens buildings all around Lynchburg. Even gravestones bear the mark of whiskey fungus.
Long’s home became ‘completely covered,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘The roof had to be cleaned two to three times a year with chemicals, costing somewhere in the vicinity of $7,000 to $10,000 each time we did it.’
The whiskey fungus grew especially problematic south of Lynchburg – population 6,748 and known as ‘The Town that Jack Built’ – when the iconic liquor company built six barrel houses in 2018, with plans to construct 14 more.
Long says the barrel houses are completely enclosed and have HVAC systems to draw out the ethanol vapors that have escaped from barrels as the whiskey is held for up for four years.
‘Typically around midnight or 10pm they will turn on their HVAC systems and completely suck all the gas out of the facility and into the surrounding community,’ he claims.
The black ‘whiskey fungus’ that blankets Lynchburg, Tennessee, chokes trees, pits the paint on cars, covers road signs making them unreadable and blackens buildings all around Lynchburg. Even gravestones bear the mark of whiskey fungus
The mold has coated the small Tennessee community since the emissions first began leaking from the Jack Daniel’s plants in 2018, before ramping up in recent years as the company expands its barrel house operation.
The only way to keep a home clean on the outside is pressure washing at least four times a year. Car paintwork is often pitted by the fungus, locals told the Daily Mail and home prices have plunged
‘That gas, that ethanol emission, creates and feeds whiskey fungus which can travel as far as two to three miles away from that facility. The fungus attaches itself to anything that doesn’t move and begins to create a black coating on top of it.’
Jack Daniel’s did not return repeated calls for comment. In the past the company has said it adheres to all regulatory guidelines.
The oily emissions started to cover everything in their path. Local officials in Moore County, fed up with forever fighting a losing battle gave up on cleaning street signs, instead replacing them once they become unreadable.
The rot is caused by a yeasty smelling ethanol vapor seeping from the spirit as it ages in charred oak barrels. The vapor leads to a notable reduction in the amount of whiskey, which the distillers refer to as ‘the angels’ share’.
Once emitted from warehouses where the barrels are stored, those gasses combine with moisture to create the hard-to-clean black spores that leaves a grimy, film-noir aura even on a sunny day.
The whiskey fungus – or ‘microflora’ as the distillery refers to it – was first identified in the 1870s around cognac distilleries in France.
Road signs have to be wiped clean of the fungus to make them legible
Daily Mail captured pictures of a fire hydrant covered in black ‘whiskey fungus’ near the barrel houses that show the build-up of fungus in two years
Long said the fungus attaches to cars, and doesn’t just discolor the paintwork, it peels it
Long said when the company HVAC the barrel building, the ethanol emission that creates and feeds the fungus can travel up to two to three miles away from the facility and attach itself to anything that doesn’t move – creating the black coating
Allen Wimberly, who lives in the Creekside Village mobile home park was scraping black gunk from the wooden spindles on his porch one day last week.
Wimberly, 59 and disabled, said that despite his own repeated power-washing efforts, the build-up is so aggressive that he has to replace his mailbox, gas grill and grandson’s swing set almost every year. He sold his beloved Nissan van after the black spores would no longer wash off.
He even sees them building up in the CPAP machine that helps him breathe while sleeping.
‘It ruins everything. It’s on the house, on my vehicles, on my grandson’s toys, in the trees and in our lungs,’ he said. ‘You mow your yard and all that black stuff flies up and you breathe it. What do you think it’s doing to our creek?
‘If I had the money, I’d sue them. But I can’t go against a big company like that.’
Three years ago, Jerry Thompson bought a home north of where several new barrel houses have since gone up. He has to pay $300 every few months to pressure wash the whiskey fungus off his vinyl siding and Chevy Silverado. The black film isn’t so much sooty as oily, and hard to spray off without bleach or harsh chemicals.
‘It’s like motor oil and looks like tar when you try washing it,’ he said of the buildup that has coated his crepe myrtle and hackberry trees, making it hard for them to soak in enough sunlight to grow branches or even leaves.
The retiree says he never worked for Jack Daniel’s ‘unlike most round here’ adding, ‘I don’t drink, so Jack Daniels don’t mean nothing to me.’
Christi and Patrick Long decided to auction their property and were told there were up to 30 bidders lined up for the big day. One was a Jack Daniel’s employee who said she was buying the property for her family
The Longs claim the company had constructed more barrel houses near The Manor at ShaeJo, the couple’s home which they rented for events. Building was temporarily halted following the lawsuit but permission was eventually granted
Still, he notes he has lived in the area long enough to know it’s no use asking the company to replace his trees or reimburse him for his power-washing expenses.
‘I know how Jack Daniel’s are and they’re not gonna budge,’ he told the Daily Mail.
Many locals with homes blighted by the fungus know enough about Jack Daniel’s clout in the area that they opt not to make much noise or expect the company or local zoning or health departments to curb its emissions.
When Patrick and Cindi Long first moved to their wedding venue mansion, The Manor at ShaeJo, a magnificent 7,700 square-foot main building constructed in 1900 and surrounded by eight acres, they knew there were barrel houses nearby.
They initially had a good relationship with the Brown-Forman Corporation, Jack Daniel’s parent company.
But that soured in 2023 when the Longs won a lawsuit forcing a temporary stop on the building new barrel houses, each the size of a pro hockey rink, in Lincoln County, where Mulberry sits.
The couple complained that Jack Daniel’s didn’t have proper permits for the buildings, some of which were completed within the last year or two and are already so blackened that they look a century older.
Long says the barrel houses are completely enclosed and have HVAC systems to draw out the ethanol vapors that have escaped from barrels as the whiskey is held for up to four years
The Jack Daniel’s distillery can’t escape the black fungus – or what its parent company calls ‘microflora’
The barrel houses spans six miles and extend within 300 feet of the Lincoln County border. But since the barrel homes are fully contained, they are not legally seen as an environmental risk despite emitting white smoke multiple times a day
And it’s the company’s refusal to take action installing air filters – because they may change the flavor of the whiskey – that has angered people like the Longs.
Patrick and Cindi Long have now moved to Alabama to get away, not only from the whiskey fungus, but also the growing anger – not aimed at Jack Daniel’s but at them.
They say so many locals are reliant on Jack Daniel’s for their livelihood, that they found themselves the targets of a campaign of hate, not from the distillery but from locals.
‘It got crazy… the cult-like attitudes from Lynchburg. They would go to our website, cut pictures and turn them into memes, just terrible things,’ Long said.
‘I travel for work, so it just got to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable with my wife receiving those kinds of threats because we lived out in the country.’
‘In Lynchburg, there’s hardly a building that Jack Daniel’s doesn’t own,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘We didn’t have that dependency, didn’t need their revenues or their support for our venue to be successful.
The effect on their business was devastating.
Anti-fungus campaigner Elizabeth Graff, also known affectionately as Granny Betty, who moved to the area from her native California, says she has also suffered from terrifying abuse and threats but remains phlegmatic and unbowed
Photos captured of a white home in Lynchburg both 2023 and 2025 show the increase of the black fungus on the roof and siding of the house
A white house coated in black mold with soot smeared across the siding
‘It reached the point where most local people would not come to the venue to consider even being married there or have an event.
‘That pretty much tanked the business at that point,’ says Long. ‘Not only did we not feel safe in our own home, our business was destroyed. The community made it clear that you shouldn’t use it because we were making trouble.
‘So we closed it down after about two and a half years. We left because it was just not safe for my family and our business was ruined.’
A second anti-fungus campaigner is still suffering a barrage of chilling messages that include identifying her isolated property on social media.
California transplant Elizabeth Graff, has to endure intimidation in response to her questions about the spores’ effects on, among other things, locals’ health.
One internet post featured a map to her house inviting people to show up and harass her. Another threatened that her face was soon to appear on milk cartons, implying she might go missing, she said.
‘They created a Facebook page where there were threatening videos like, you know, here’s a picture of a nosy neighbor and we’re going to point a gun at him. There was a whole lot of just rude, mean, nasty, ridicule kind of stuff,’ said Graff, known affectionately as Granny Betty.
She too believes that Jack Daniel’s and Brown-Forman – one of the world’s largest wine and spirit producers – are not the ones behind the threats, but rather its their workers in a rural area with an average income of about $36,000.
But unlike the Longs, Graff is staying.
‘I’ll pick when I want to move,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to let them run me out.’
Jack Daniel himself – or, at least, a statue of him – appears untouched by the fungus that coats the area. A local family’s playground is not so fortunate
Some residents say home values have plunged while others fear for their health, claiming they know people who blame it for their cancer – although nothing has been proved
Jack Daniels’ Distillery in Lynchburg. The ethanol leakage that comes out of these barrel houses is a process known as the ‘angel share’ in whiskey production when some of the whiskey evaporates every year during aging. The company claims the process ‘ is not harmful to individuals or their property’
Brown-Forman is laying off 640 workers at its barrel-making plant in Louisville, Kentucky in a bid to save $80million a year. The company’s net sales have slumped five percent in the second half of 2024. Whiskey sales were down one percent
Although Jack Daniel’s did not comment on this article despite a number of attempts to reach out, the company said in 2023 it ‘adhered to regulatory requirements, strict industry guidelines, and rigorous internal standards that we follow in building warehouses’.
‘Anyone who has visited the Jack Daniel Distillery or any other distillery with maturing spirits has likely noticed the presence of microflora.
‘Microflora grows on trees, buildings, and other structures around distilleries and warehouses. Ethanol released from barrels during maturation, also called “the angels’ share”, is just one of microflora’s many food sources.’
Allen Wimberly, who has lived in Creekside Village for 25 years, is especially embittered that nobody from Jack Daniel’s bothered to discuss plans to build the new barrel houses with him or his neighbors.
‘How many more warehouses do they need? They’re building more as we speak right now,’ he said. ‘Everyone around here feels the same way. We’re just scared to talk because we don’t want people hunting us down and shooting us.’
