Ben & Jerry's Discontinued Tennessee Mud Flavor Had A Short Run

While we're not ones to be picky about ice cream, everyone has a favorite brand. For us, Ben & Jerry's ranks among the top. Why? For one, the ice cream giant has a long and enticing lineup of flavors. (What could be more decadent than a brownie batter core?) Combined with its unique branding and high sustainability goals – it's all part of the package that makes Ben & Jerry's a favorite for fans all over. 

While the company certainly thrives in many categories, proven by the soaring sales of some of its most popular ice cream flavors like Half Baked, not every mission is a success. One such setback was the discontinuation of its Tennessee Mud flavor. Never heard of it? Well, that's because it wasn't around for very long. 

The Tennessee Mud flavor was a coffee-based ice cream blend infused with Jack Daniels and Amaretto — with some slivered almonds thrown in for crunch. While some fans enjoyed the flavor and happily indulged, it didn't quite get the momentum Ben & Jerry's was hoping for. The unique flavor only saw the light of day for less than a year from 1988 to 1989. It's a sad tale, but Tennessee Mud isn't alone in the Ben & Jerry's ice cream afterlife. The company has experimented with quite a few flavor combinations in its history — and not all of them have been winners.

Tennessee Mud is far from the only Ben & Jerry's flavor to have reached the graveyard. (Which, yes, actually is a real place you can visit if you find yourself near the company's factory in Waterbury, Vermont.) Some other flavors that made the leap from freezer aisle to gravestone? One of the most unique of them all was the Ben & Jerry's Sugar Plum ice cream. This flavor combination was a plum ice cream with a caramel swirl. Much like Tennessee Mud, this flavor had a short run and was only in rotation for one year from 1989 to 1990. Another surprisingly long-running flavor was the Dastardly Mash. In action from 1979 to 1991, this chocolate ice cream came with a smattering of chocolate chips, pecans, almonds, and raisins.

While some of these flavors are more obvious flops than others (a ginger ice cream with chocolate bowties?), some discontinued Ben & Jerry's flavors are still dearly missed. One of the most beloved of those ice cream flavors was the Oatmeal Cookie Chunk flavor. In circulation from 2004-2012, there are still many fans that mourn the loss of this sweet, fudgy find. The love for this flavor was great, and Ben & Jerry's even considers it the most missed flavor out of its entire history. So if it was so well-liked, why did it have to go? Well, the process of keeping Ben & Jerry's ice cream on the shelves comes down to a science.

While we wish that some Ben & Jerry's flavors could come back from the dead, there's simply not enough room on the shelves. (If you check out our complete list of Ben & Jerry's offerings, you'll see what we mean.) No matter what some diehard fans of Ben & Jerry's might say, inevitably, some flavors have to go. But how does the brand decide what to kick and what to keep? The process isn't easy, but there is a system in place to keep things moving.

Ben & Jerry's brings new flavors into its rotation thanks to a team of people dubbed "Flavor Gurus" that keep the ideas coming. This qualified group of former chefs and food chemists is constantly dreaming up new flavor combinations and putting them to the test. This takes extensive research, surveys, and taste tests to accomplish. At the center of the team's approach to making new ice cream is a goal to create flavors that are innovative, yet conventional — which is exactly what sets Ben & Jerry's apart. But of course, as time goes on, some of the less-popular flavors have to be nixed to make room for the new ones.

Still, you never know. With enough luck (and maybe an online petition or two), flavors like Tennessee Mud or Oatmeal Cookie Chunk might just see the light of day once more. It's happened before, so why not again?