Black distillers have played a significant hand in the creation of the modern spirits industry. But all too often their contributions have been overlooked and input kept outside of the boardroom. Today, perhaps the most famous story of black erasure in the spirits industry is the one central to Uncle Nearest whiskey.
Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green was a former slave who mentored a teenage Jack Daniel to learn the distilling trade, but vanished from the story of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey for more than a century.
It was only through the research of Fawn Weaver that his story was revealed, with Brown-Forman finally officially recognising him as Jack Daniel’s first master distiller.
In July 2017, Weaver launched Uncle Nearest whiskey with Victoria Eady Butler, a descendent of Green, joining as master blender in 2019, becoming the first known African-American female whiskey master blender.
According to the IWSR, the brand has become the fastest-growing whiskey brand in the US and the most successful black-owned distillery in the world.
But while Weaver and Eady Butler have turned the story of an uncredited genius into gold, that’s not the experience of most of the black people who helped build the spirits industry.
In the Caribbean, rum was commonly made by enslaved Africans. Much of Britain’s slavery was offshore in these Caribbean plantations and there are almost no records crediting the enslaved individuals involved in production.
In June 2020, Ian Burrell launched Equiano rum alongside Foursquare master distiller Richard Seale. The brand, which is the world’s first African & Caribbean rum, honours Olaudah Equiano, who was enslaved as a child and shipped to the Caribbean from his village in modern-day Nigeria.
Later, Equiano was able to purchase his freedom and in London he became a key member of the abolitionist movement.
High-profile launch
Modern black spirits entrepreneurs are pulling back the curtain on some of the industry’s most shameful history and in doing so highlighting how far it has to go.
Black people still make up a small but growing fraction of spirits brand ownership, but recently, whiskey may have acquired its most high-profile brand owner to date.
In September 2024, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter launched Sir Davis, a rye whiskey produced in a joint venture with Moët-Hennessy. The brand is named for Knowles-Carter’s great-grandfather, Davis Hogue, a Prohibition-era moonshiner and farmer.
Initial reception has been fervent. The Sir Davis pre-sale sold out across many markets in the US. That’s no surprise given its founder’s reputation, but still in an age when celebrity-backed spirits projects don’t make the same splash that they once did, that’s not to be sniffed at.
What shouldn’t be overlooked is how significant this launch is for black and female-owned spirits brands.
As Weaver puts it: “Having another white man enter the whiskey industry has never hurt the existing 100 white guys, so another black woman launching a whiskey isn’t going to hurt me.”
