Later that year she opened the Nearest Green Distillery in Shelbyville. By 2019 she had raised $40 million from investors to create Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. This gave Weaver the idea to start her own whiskey company that honored Green’s legacy. They told her that “putting his name on a bottle, letting people know what he did, would be great.” Weaver was able to meet Green’s descendants during her research and asked them how they would like to see him honored. While Nearest Green and his descendants do appear to have been paid fairly by the Daniel family, they didn’t own any of the distillery – and, consequently, didn’t get any of those millions.įor decades, Nearest Green’s name, legacy and contribution to whiskey were largely unknown to anyone outside Lynchburg, Tennessee – even though, after the Civil War, according to census data, Nearest Green and his family owned sizable plots of land and were wealthier than many white families living in Lynchburg. In 1956, the family sold it to Brown-Forman for US$20 million dollars – about $190 million in today’s money. Jack Daniel and his descendants made a lot of money from their whiskey company over the years. Although no images of Nearest Green exist, a photograph shows one of his sons, George, sitting next to Jack Daniel.Īltogether, seven generations of Nearest Green’s family have worked for the Jack Daniel Distillery and continue to work there to this day.
Nearest’s second-born and fourth-born sons, George and Eli, distilled whiskey on the Call Farm alongside Jack Daniel. Weaver discovered that sometime after 1881, Daniel moved his distillery to its current Cave Spring Hollow location, where several of Green’s children and grandchildren went to work for him.Ī statue of Jack Daniel in Lynchburg, Tenn.
Uncle nearest whiskey stock free#
Daniel appointed Nearest Green, by then a free man, to be the Jack Daniel Distillery’s first master distiller, and thus the first Black master distiller on record in the United States. As Victoria Eady-Butler, Green’s descendant and former employee of Jack Daniel’s Distillery, noted that there would “ never have been Jack Daniel’s made without a Green on the property.”Īfter emancipation, Call sold his distillery to Jack Daniel. Eventually, he became Green’s apprentice and was taught the Lincoln County Process, which differentiates bourbon from Tennessee whiskey – making Nearest responsible for the Tennessee whiskey we know today. Years later, Jack Daniel, a 7-year-old white orphan, was sent to the Call farm to be a chore boy. This method – which some historians believe was inspired by the techniques of enslaved men and women who had used charcoal to filter their water and purify their foods in West Africa – gave Green’s whiskey a unique smoothness. The rollouts of these ryes are part of Uncle Dearest’s “12 Weeks of Christmas,” which includes special promotions like bottle signings and limited time offerings like a Legacy Collection Ultimate gift Set, which will contain all seven Uncle Nearest whiskeys.Nearest was known as a skilled distiller who specialized in a process known as sugar maple charcoal filtering – also called the Lincoln County Process. Uncle Nearest Single Barrel Black Label will be released on Black Friday for $79, and Uncle Nearest Single Barrel Rye will be released on Dec. Uncle Nearest Straight Rye Whiskey retails for $59.
“This letter led me to believe rye whiskeys were being made in this area so after I found that letter, there was no doubt in my mind, a straight rye whiskey would one day be added to our portfolio of whiskeys,” Weaver says. There’s also a good chance that the whiskey Dickinson sent Taft was made by Nearest Green’s son, George, based on the length of years Jack Daniel kept his whiskey in the barrels at that time. The letter, accompanied by the historical description of how Dickinson had been introduced to Jack Daniel likely means that at that time, some of their whiskeys were made with rye. Because so many of the Jack Daniels Distillery records of that time period were either lost or burned, Weaver took the letter at its word. Now, Taft could have been mistaken and attributed the wrong grain description.
This unusual mention stood out to Weaver, who believes that there had been some whiskeys made with rye. Secretary of War under Taft, for sending his favorite rye whiskey “of the Lincoln County variety.” In the letter, President Taft was thanking Jacob McGavock “Mac” Dickinson, former U.S.
It was a letter from the White House, specifically from President William Taft, on May 16, 1911. When Weaver was doing her research on Nearest Green, she came across a very peculiar letter.
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