Uncle Nearest Distillery Revives a Historical Legend in American Whiskey
In partnership with: Tennessee Department of Agriculture
It was in Singapore of all places that entrepreneur Fawn Weaver found out that the mentor to legendary whiskey distiller Jack Daniel was a Black man. She was reading the international edition of The New York Times on a trip when she discovered the story of Nearest Green, a formerly enslaved man who worked as a master distiller for a preacher and went on to teach a young Daniel all that he knew. It was an oral history that had been passed down from generation to generation.
“In my lifetime, I wasn’t familiar with any story of any major American brand that could prove there was an African American at the very beginning of it,” Weaver says. “So the idea that it was possible that one of the most well-known American brands of all time had that history was something that I thought was worth exploring.”
Weaver got to work digging up details on the story treasured by master distiller Nathan “Nearest” Green’s descendants, building a team of 20 historians, archaeologists, archivists, journalists, genealogists and conservators. She also traveled to six states and interviewed descendants.
They learned that Nearest Green – or Uncle Nearest, as his family and friends in Lynchburg called him – was an enslaved man on Dan Call’s farm, where he ran the distillery. Later, 7-year-old Jack Daniel came to work at the farm and was taken under Green’s wing. After emancipation, Green and his sons worked at Jack Daniel’s distillery. The Green family became one of the wealthiest Black families in the the region.
See more: Tree to Barrel: Storing Jack Danie’s Tennessee Whiskey
During the research process, Weaver and her team collected more than 10,000 artifacts and documents from the people of Lynchburg. Now they are on display at the former home of Jack Daniel. Weaver and her team took the cigar room and transformed it into the research room, where the Green family history comes alive.
As the first documented African American distiller in the country, Green’s legacy lives on at the Nearest Green Distillery in Shelbyville, Tennessee, where Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey is made today.
“Our focus wasn’t the recipe; our focus was the process, and we knew Nearest’s process in terms of what he did once the whiskey was distilled,” Weaver says. “That was a bigger piece to us. We’ve got four different recipes, and all of them are fantastic and originate in this area.”
You most certainly cannot create a namesake brand and assign values to it if you don’t believe in the values of the namesake.”
– Fawn Weaver, founder of Uncle Nearest, Inc.
Believed to have originated from Green’s West African roots and now known as the Lincoln County Process, the water is naturally purified by Tennessee’s limestone shelf and filtered through charcoal from sugar maple trees.
See more: How Tennessee Farmers, Brewers and Distillers are Working Together
As a Black-owned, woman-owned whiskey brand in an industry dominated by white males, Uncle Nearest has skyrocketed in a short amount of time. It’s now sold in all 50 states and available in 12 countries. The whiskey was featured on Oprah’s Favorite Things list in 2020 and has won 350 awards, including 40 best in class.
But it’s not the accolades that keep the brand moving, but rather its identity as a purpose-driven company since day one. The Nearest Green Foundation was founded before the first bottle of whiskey was ever sold and pays for the college tuition of Green’s descendants. During conversations about racial injustice, Uncle Nearest and Jack Daniel partnered to create the Nearest & Jack Advancement Initiative, a $5 million fund to encourage diversity in American whiskey. The company also donated $57,000 to help bartenders who were unrooted after the deadly 2020 Nashville and Wilson County tornado, and Jack Daniel’s immediately matched them. During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Weaver directed the team to send masks to frontline workers.
“You can’t dig into someone’s life like this and unpeel layers without really understanding who that person was as a human being. And you most certainly cannot create a namesake brand and assign values to it if you don’t believe in the values of the namesake,” Weaver says.
If You Go:
Nearest Green Distillery
3125 U.S. 231 N., Shelbyville, TN
(931) 773-3070
Recipe: Cinnamon Apple Sour
Ingredients
- 2 ounces Uncle Nearest 1856 Premium Aged Whiskey
- 0.75 ounce cinnamon apple syrup
- 0.5 ounce lemon juice
- 0.5 ounce aquafaba*
- 2-3 dashes orange bitters
- Dried orange wheel
*Aquafaba is made from the liquid leftover from cooked chickpeas and has the functional properties of egg whites.
Instructions
1. Add all cocktail ingredients into a shaker without ice.
2. Dry shake for 10 seconds, add ice and then shake again for 8 to 10 seconds.
3. Double strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a dried orange wheel.