Fawn American to own a major spirits brand – and the person who unveiled the truth about Jack Daniel’s black master distiller. Shay Waterworth meets a woman on a mission to change the face of American whiskey History in the making Fawn Weaver is tenacious. Having entered the spirits industry less than a decade ago, she now owns several distilleries across different continents. Her flagship Tennessee whiskey brand Uncle Nearest is part of a portfolio of spirits alongside cognac house Domaine Saint Martin and Square One Organic Spirits, based in California.
“That’s the only way to survive in this industry, you either get absorbed by one of the big guys, or you become one of the big guys,” says Weaver, who outlined to Drinks International her plans to become a major international player. “In 2020, I expressed our vision for Uncle Nearest to not just be a brand, but to become the first spirits conglomerate in America founded by a woman or person of colour.
“Within the industry you’re just battered and bruised depending on how the big players are doing – the power is with them. I’ll be impacted by their decisions for the next decade easily.
“By entering the vodka market, we're not just expanding our portfolio, we’re responding to a consumer call for transparent, culturally connected brands. The vodka will come to market in February 2025 because, although we bought it this year, we wanted to peel back every layer to make sure we had the right people on board. When you see the relaunch you’ll know it’s Square One, but you’ll know it’s evolved.
“When the cognac comes out, I think people will also be very surprised. It has a great story and again we’ve put all the right people in the right places, but I think the cognac business will give Uncle Nearest a run for its money.”
Storytelling is one of Weaver’s greatest strengths beyond building business. She first learnt about the untold history of Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green in a New York Times article by Clay Risen in 2016. The article described how Green was integral in the creation of modern-day Jack Daniel’s, but his role had been almost entirely lost in history. During the mid 1800s, Green was working as a slave on Dan Call Farm where he distilled whiskey. He’s credited with developing the Lincoln County Process and taught a young Jack Daniel everything he knew about distillation, so much so that Daniel employed Green as his first master distiller after emancipation.
For most people that story had now been told, but Weaver was far from satisfied. She travelled to Lynchburg to research Green’s history with the intention of writing a book. This year she launched that book, but along the way she also opened the Nearest Green Foundation, developed the Uncle Nearest brand and opened its own distillery in 2019.
Turbulent relationships
The book, Love & Whiskey, details her journey from the world of investment and PR to whiskey production. It documents her research into the Green family as well as her rather turbulent relationship with Brown-Forman, and most notably Mark McCallum, then president of Jack Daniel’s. Naturally, McCallum and the Brown-Forman hierarchy were concerned about Weaver’s arrival. After all, she’d developed an independent whiskey brand with a legacy built on the untold history of Jack Daniel’s.
Throughout the book, Weaver and McCallum came close to various legal battles yet remained civil. To McCallum’s credit he took on board what Weaver had learned about both their companies’ histories and a mutual respect was forged.
“As time went by, with lots of close work with Mark McCallum and (Jack Daniel’s archivist) Nelson Eddy, Uncle Nearest settled into actual coexistence with Jack Daniel’s,” writes Weaver in Love & Whiskey. “We share a history, but we are entirely separate. We’d had our challenges, but at the end of the day, we’ve made each other better. And we share a common goal.”
McCallum and Weaver, despite the initial differences, grew close and after he retired from Brown-Forman McCallum took on a board role at Weaver’s investment company Grant Sidney where he remains today.
Everything Weaver does is part of a bigger picture. Love & Whiskey is important to her personally, but it’s now being used as part of a distribution strategy for Uncle Nearest.
“The industry is specifically set up so that the big guys work with the big distributors to make sure every new brand that comes in either sells or fails. Even in London, it’s so difficult to break a product into the market unless you’re coming through one of the big guys like LVMH or Brown-Forman. It’s close to impossible to get behind a back bar.
“The book is going to enter new markets before the whiskey does, so that people will know the story and go looking for Uncle Nearest,” adds Weaver.
“The goal with Uncle Nearest is primarily to make the name Nearest Green ubiquitous around the world. That means it has to keep growing internationally and not just in the US. Right now, we’re almost entirely US driven. Early on we tried exporting but it wasn’t a good strategy because we didn’t know how other markets worked and we didn’t have people on the ground, so we pulled everything back. Now we have people on the ground in London and Japan outside the US.”
When it comes to reaching consumers directly, Weaver’s focus is on distillery visits. She states that Nearest Green Distillery was the seventh most visited distillery in the world in 2023, with 250,000 people coming through the gates.
Today, Weaver’s whiskey is in every US state and growing internationally. In the book, she claims it was valued at $1.5bn and could have been offered more had she declared interest in selling. The impact of Green’s legacy as the first African American master distiller in US history, combined with Weaver becoming the first African American to own a major spirits brand, means more to her than money.
“Uncle Nearest is about more than whiskey, and I’m never going to sell it. It’s worth far more than $2bn to me,” she writes.
“In 2017, the spirits industry – especially whiskey – was still marketed almost exclusively to white men. No one in bourbon or American whiskey in general was really marketing to anyone outside this pool beyond a few half-hearted attempts at observing Black History Month and similar occasions.
“In 2024, thanks to Uncle Nearest and the work we’ve done to reposition bourbon in the market, no one would look at bourbon and say ‘That’s a white man’s drink’.”
