"In terms of being open to acknowledging Green’s achievements, that is something this industry embraced from day one. Success has a funny way of changing how folks see you."īut as for honoring Green's legacy in itself, Weaver says the industry was more than receptive. It took a lot of the folks in this industry over two years to realize I was actually the one running the company. "They thought it less odd that he’d be running a whiskey company in Tennessee while maintaining a very full time role in Los Angeles, than. "He either got straight through or received calls back within the same day," she says. In the very beginning Weaver even had her husband (a Fortune 500 executive) pose as the CEO of the company in order to get distributors, bottling fabricators, and more to respond to her team's calls. Courtesy of Uncle NearestĪs a brand featuring a primarily non-white team with an all-female leadership, Uncle Nearest has encountered some of the same issues that Green's legacy itself faced struggling to be acknowledged by an establishment that expects a different archetype of a distiller. Victoria Eady Butler, the great-great-granddaughter of Nearest Green, now serves as the distillery’s master blender. "The more I learn the more I feel connected to my great-great-grandfather and work he did all those years ago. "There has been a lot of on-the-job training and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it," she says. Several member of Victoria's family have worked in the whiskey industry over the years, and she says she's been able to draw on that shared knowledge as she's developed into the first African-American female master blender on record in the U.S. Shortly, thereafter, I asked her to become our Master Blender, as it was important to me that someone who was in Nearest Green’s bloodline be the one stewarding over the whiskey in the bottle that bears his name." "With every batch, she just kept getting better and better. And that one sold out so fast we asked her to do the third batch," says Weaver. "Her first batch became such a fan favorite that we asked her to do the second batch. And though she had no industry experience when she began tasting, the palette doesn't lie. Butler worked for 31 years for the Department of Justice before joining Uncle Nearest as Director of Administration, helping to oversee a scheme which grants full scholarships to all of Green's college-age descendants. Green's great-great-granddaughter, Victoria Eady Butler, was chosen as the first family member to curate a bottle. Since they launched in 2017, Uncle Nearest has opened their own Tennessee distillery and developed three bottlings of whiskey inspired by Nearest Green. In the years since, they have opened their own distillery in Shelbyville, Tennessee and developed a three-bottling product line featuring the original 1856 Premium Aged Whiskey, the 1820 Single-Barrel Edition, and a 1884 Small Batch bottling curated by descendants of Green. Uncle Nearest, a whiskey inspired by Green and his legacy, launched in 2017 and has become the fastest-growing independent American whiskey brand in U.S. And we became a part of the 1% that not only did not fail, but are continuing to grow and thrive." "It seemed like it would have been irresponsible to not at least try. A descendant of Jack Daniel's family, who'd retired as the head of whiskey operations after 31 years, even offered to come out of retirement if Nearest were ever honored with a bottle, Weaver adds. But when Nearest's family members were asked how they felt he should be honored, their answer was that his name should live on a bottle. "Quite frankly, I had no interest in going to my friends and family and asking them to invest in a project that had 100 times more likelihood of failure than it did of success," she says of her reluctance to get into the whiskey business.
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