Nearest Green Distillery

Uncle Nearest is the Shelbyville, Tennessee distillery built around one of the most consequential historical recovery projects in American whiskey: the formal recognition, in 2016, of Nathan "Nearest" Green as the first known African-American master distiller in the United States. Green was an enslaved distiller in Lincoln County, Tennessee who taught a young Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel the Lincoln County Process — the sugar-maple-charcoal filtration step that distinguishes Tennessee whiskey from bourbon as a legal category. Jack Daniel's own founding mythology has always acknowledged Green's role; Uncle Nearest is the brand that took that acknowledgment, scaled it into a fully owned distillery operation, and built it into the fastest-growing American whiskey brand of the modern era. Founder Fawn Weaver, an author and entrepreneur, launched the brand in 2017 after spending years researching Nearest Green's history and meeting with Green's direct descendants. Weaver structured the company so that Green's descendants are formally involved in the business — Victoria Eady Butler (Green's great-great-granddaughter) serves as Master Blender, the first African-American woman to hold a master-blender title at a Tennessee whiskey distillery. The company is the largest African-American-owned spirits brand in the United States and one of the few craft Tennessee whiskey operations to scale to national distribution within five years of founding. The Nearest Green Distillery itself opene…