distillery in Shelbyville, Tennessee, some 50 miles southeast of Nashville, the founder bellied up to the bar to say a quick hello.One pair mentioned their heritage, they were Chippewa, traveling from Oklahoma.. This matters to Fawn Weaver. She founded and named the company after Nathan"Nearest" Green, the first known Black master distiller and"the best whiskey-maker the world never knew," to highlight his hidden legacy.
To fully understand her optimism requires an understanding of Weaver herself. She's the first Black American woman to lead a major spirits company. According to 2022 data from Women in Distilling, less than 8 percent of the more than 2,200 craft distilleries in the country are women-owned. Only about 175 are Black-owned.
"At that point, I didn't really understand cutting losses; I do now," she says, laughing."I needed to get my mind off it." Astonished by the findings, Weaver set out to find out as much as she could about the Green family. What she found was a rare American narrative for that time: one of mutual love, respect, and friendship between Black and white people during an especially violent era for the former, all while creating a markedly American product in Jack Daniel's.
Weaver was energized by the idea, enough that she and her husband eventually left California and permanently moved to the area in 2020. But she was still reeling from her previous financial loss, and the whiskey industry, run by white men—usually already born with historical and legacy ties to set them up—wasn't easy to break into.