Lynchburg Lemonade

Jack Daniel's, triple sec, and lemon-lime soda — Tony Mason's 1980 Huntsville creation, the 1987 lawsuit awarding Mason just one dollar for the unprotected recipe.

The Lynchburg Lemonade was created in 1980 by Tony Mason, the owner of the Center Court Restaurant and Lounge in Huntsville, Alabama. According to Garden & Gun magazine, Mason — who was also a musician — threw together the formula one evening reportedly to soothe a sore throat, combining Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey with triple sec, sour mix, and lemon-lime soda. The drink took its name from Lynchburg, Tennessee, the small Moore County town that is home to the Jack Daniel's distillery — a pointed irony given that Lynchburg sits in one of Tennessee's dry counties, where the whiskey that made it famous cannot be legally purchased by the drink. Mason's Lynchburg Lemonade proved immediately popular at his bar. A Jack Daniel's sales representative named Winston Randle subsequently learned the recipe, and the parent company Brown-Forman launched a national promotional campaign for the drink without compensating Mason. Mason sued, and the case — Mason v. Jack Daniel Distillery — was heard in the Madison County Circuit Court in 1987. The court ruled in Mason's favor but awarded him only one dollar in nominal damages on the grounds that the recipe was not adequately protected as a trade secret. The case became a landmark example of the difficulty of establishing intellectual property rights over cocktail formulas. Jack Daniel's continued promoting the drink, and it became one of the brand's most recognized signature cocktails.