Love & Whiskey

Fawn Weaver, a Black entrepreneur and bestselling author, recounts how she discovered the untold story of Nearest Green, an African American master distiller, and built a whiskey empire to cement his legacy. Part memoir, part business narrative, and part historical investigation, the book traces Weaver's journey from a chance newspaper article to founding Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, which became the fastest-growing Black-owned spirit brand of all time.

Weaver grew up in Los Angeles in a strict evangelical Southern Baptist household. Her father, Frank Wilson, was a former Motown songwriter and producer who became a minister; her mother was a bestselling author of relationship books. At 15, when her parents gave her an ultimatum to conform or leave, Weaver left. She dropped out of high school, spent years in homeless shelters, and landed a job at BB King's Blues Club at 18. By 19, she had founded her own PR firm, FEW Entertainment, though inexperience caused it to falter. She attempted suicide twice by age 20 before dedicating herself to self-discovery and rebuilding. By 25, she co-owned one of Los Angeles's top restaurants. In 2003, she married Keith Weaver after her hairdresser, Keith's mother, orchestrated their introduction.

In June 2016, while on a business trip to Singapore, Weaver read a New York Times article by journalist Clay Risen headlined "Jack Daniel's Embraces a Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave." The article revealed that Jack Daniel, the businessman behind the iconic whiskey brand, had learned distilling not from a white preacher named Dan Call, as long told, but from an enslaved man named Nearest Green. A photograph showed Jack Daniel seated beside a Black man in a position of honor. The article stirred intense debate: Some celebrated the revelation, while others accused Jack Daniel of stealing Nearest's recipe. Weaver sensed the story was being misunderstood and that it was fundamentally about mutual respect, not exploitation.

On their way home, Weaver and Keith learned that her niece Brittany, 26, had died in a motorcycle accident. Devastated, Weaver threw herself into researching Nearest Green. She read Ben A. Green's 1967 biography Jack Daniel's Legacy, which depicted Nearest as Jack's mentor. She discovered that she shared a September 5 birthday with Ben Green, with Nearest's granddaughter Annie Bell Green Eady (known as Mammie), and with Clay Risen himself. Jack Daniel's birthday was traditionally celebrated on that same date. Weaver came to see the five of them as chosen keepers of Nearest's story across more than a century.

Weaver secured trademarks for "Uncle Nearest," "Nearest Green," and related names, which Brown-Forman, the $22 billion company that owns Jack Daniel's, had never claimed. She convinced a reluctant Keith to visit Lynchburg, Tennessee, for her 40th birthday in September 2016. At the Moore County Library, an assistant librarian located a church document stating that Jack had learned whiskey-making by "helping" Nearest Green, reversing the power dynamic the Times headline implied. Weaver met Judy Boyd Terjen, a granddaughter of Jack Daniel's nephew Lem Motlow, who connected her to Juanita Dunlap (Miss Neat), Nearest's great-great-granddaughter by marriage and a tireless local genealogist.

Weaver and Keith visited the Dan Call Farm, where Jack had grown up and Nearest had run the still. At the original still site on Louse Creek, Weaver felt Nearest and Jack's presence and decided to buy the property. Back in California, she hired Stephani Ross as her research assistant and began reconstructing Nearest's family tree. Census records proved unreliable for Black Americans, so Weaver traveled to archives across the country, photographing thousands of pages. In Lynchburg's local archives, she found eight tax ledgers from 1873 to 1884 listing Nearest Green, the first proof of his existence beyond the census. Moore County archivist Christine Pyrdom then discovered documents showing Jack Daniel had leased Dan Call's distillery in 1877, renaming it the Jack Daniel Distillery. This proved the Call Farm, not Cave Spring Hollow, the later and better-known distillery location, was the original home of Distillery No. 7, Jack Daniel's famous federal registration number, and that Nearest had been its master distiller.

Weaver organized gatherings of Lynchburg's Black elders, who confirmed the town's unusually harmonious racial dynamics. She also uncovered two acts of racial violence: an 1894 mob lynching of four Black people on Jack Daniel's own property while he lay bedridden and powerless, and a 1903 attack on a jailed Black man in which Lynchburg townspeople fought an outside mob to defend the man's right to a fair trial. Helen Butler (Miss Helen), George Green's granddaughter, provided crucial family history and solved a key mystery by identifying the Black man in the famous photograph as her grandfather George Green.

At a November 2016 gathering of Green descendants, one man said Nearest deserved to have his own bottle. Weaver spontaneously committed: "We'll do it. We'll raise the money." She assembled a small team and raised $3 million, guided by mentor Michael Berman, a California political strategist who made a large personal investment and secured the first six investors. In early 2017, Weaver required Brown-Forman executive vice president Mark McCallum to visit Nearest's descendants at the distillery before meeting her. Mark spent an emotional hour listening to Debbie Staples, Mammie's granddaughter, and her siblings describe decades of being silenced about their ancestor. At the Call Farm, Mark asked, "Tell me how we make this right." But when Weaver revealed a mockup of the Uncle Nearest bottle, Mark was visibly shaken. Brown-Forman pushed for a coexistence agreement, but Weaver refused, knowing it would let the larger company overwhelm her startup. Keith negotiated patiently, sending drafts back and forth for over a year without committing.

Uncle Nearest 1856 Premium Whiskey launched on July 19, 2017, in Portland, Oregon. Defying conventional wisdom, Weaver went national immediately and built a network of 17 distributors to prevent any single one from controlling the brand. On August 12, 2017, nearly 100 Green descendants gathered at the Dan Call Farm for the first family reunion, while 600 miles away, deadly violence erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, creating a stark contrast on social media between the loving family photos and images of white nationalist violence. On December 2, 2017, Weaver dedicated a monument at Highview Cemetery to Nearest and his wife, Harriet Green, inscribed: "Father. Husband. Mentor. The Best Whiskey Maker the World Never Knew."

Victoria Eady Butler, Mammie's granddaughter and Nearest's great-great-granddaughter, joined the company after a 30-year career in law enforcement and discovered a natural talent for blending whiskey. As master blender, she developed Uncle Nearest 1884 Premium Small Batch Whiskey, which won gold, double gold, and Best in Class awards.

Brown-Forman attempted to produce its own bottle named for Nathan Green, Nearest's birth name, and engaged in behind-the-scenes efforts to undermine Uncle Nearest. Weaver maintained her commitment never to speak negatively about the company, and this discipline gradually earned Brown-Forman's respect. Jack Daniel's incorporated a Nearest Green exhibit into their visitor center and dedicated their oldest warehouse as the George Green Barrel House. In 2020, the two companies launched the Nearest & Jack Advancement Initiative to promote diversity in the spirits industry through apprenticeships, a business incubation program, and the Nearest Green School of Distilling.

The Nearest Green Distillery opened on September 5, 2019, at Sand Creek Farms, a 270-acre property in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Weaver and Keith established the Nearest Green Foundation, offering full-ride college scholarships to every blood descendant of Nearest Green. Uncle Nearest crossed $100 million in sales in 2022 and by 2023 was the world's most awarded bourbon or American whiskey for the fifth consecutive year. The distillery ranked as the seventh most-visited in the world. Weaver rejected a $2 billion acquisition offer, declaring she will never sell and framing her refusal as essential to building generational wealth for Black Americans. In 2024, Harvard Business School began teaching Uncle Nearest as a case study. Weaver commits to finding the next person with a September 5 birthday to carry on the legacy.