Uncle Nearest Whiskey’s Founder Shares Tales Of Relocating To Rural Tennessee To Found A Distillery
Fawn Weaver is known today as the woman who turned Nearest Green’s legacy into a dedicated whiskey brand, but before that, she was a best-selling author and tech entrepreneur living in California with no ties to the spirits industry. Green, a.k.a. “Uncle Nearest”, was the former slave who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. The story about Nearest’s ties to Jack Daniel’s distillery has been known to locals in Lynchburg, the Tennessee town where it is located, and was written about decades ago in a book about Jack Daniel. When the story and its book were uncovered once again recently by Clay Risen in The New York Times in an effort to highlight Green’s legacy, Weaver read the story and decided she had to know more about this mysterious African-American man who made such a huge impact on the spirits industry in America. She planned her 40th birthday trip to Lynchburg, Tennessee, so she could interview anyone she could find with memories or stories of Uncle Nearest. Her plan was to write a book and movie about Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green, followed by producing a commemorative bottle of whiskey. What she learned on that first fateful trip not only cemented her resolve to honor this great man’s legacy, but it also sparked a cross-country move, and the building of a new distillery to honor his legacy to produce a whiskey that right out of the gate, won a silver medal in the 2019 NY International Spirits Competition. Below is the story, edited for clarity, of that first step in the journey to what today has become the Uncle Nearest Distillery.
| Contact This Member |
