By Honoring ‘Nearest’ Green, Fawn Weaver Is Crafting Her Own History

Post-Civil War, there was a former slave from Lynchburg, Tennessee, by the name of “Nearest” Green, who taught Jack Daniel—yes, the man who became the brand—the craft of making whiskey. Though Green’s history was largely unrecognized until recent years, his legacy is being brought to the fore through the team at Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, helmed by CEO Fawn Weaver. Weaver was so inspired by Green’s story that she moved across the country to Tennessee to dive deeper into researching his background. She quickly determined that she wanted to do more than share Green’s background through a book (Green's birth name was Nathan and through he went by the name "Nearest"). She wanted to create a product and a brand that would honor his legacy. In doing so, Weaver is distilling her own wide-ranging career as an entrepreneur, real estate executive, historian and marketing maven by establishing herself as a craft whiskey pioneer in her own right. Weaver contacted Green’s descendants to start the brand in 2017 debuted the Nearest Green Distillery in 2019. In less than two years, Uncle Nearest expanded to all 50 states, plus 12 countries. In fact, the IWSR Drinks Market Analysis reported Uncle Nearest nearly tripled its volume (+280%) between 2018 and 2019, making it one of the fastest-growing whiskey companies in the U.S. The Macallan’s First Virtual Experience Takes Fans Behind the Scenes of Whiskey Making Weaver and her all-female leadership team have made Uncle Nearest a success with their winning cocktail of a high-quality spirit and inspired storytelling. Getting a feel for the “market” In addition to shaking up the overwhelmingly white world of spirits producers, Weaver is also flipping the script on the marketing of whiskey. For one thing, she’s taking aim at more passive whiskey consumers rather than concentrating on “heavy” rye and bourbon devotees. “The thing is, there’s this thought process that science blows up, but for some reason, marketers keep doing it which is marketing to a demographic,” Weaver tells Adweek. “But if you look at the science, the light buyers don't fit a demographic. The light buyers are a significant percentage of who is actually buying every product.” Roughly 40% of spirits consumers are the so-called “light buyers” that Weaver refers to. This means that these buyers are walking into a store with no allegiance. "That's a huge percentage to give up," she adds. "And you give that up if you focus on a [specific] demographic." Thus, instead of marketing Uncle Nearest to whiskey enthusiasts alone, the team markets to everyone. Weaver, who is currently in the middle of a promotional tour in the U.S., has noticed a key point that serves as supporting evidence of the efficacy of the brand’s broad marketing strategy. Her personal market research takes the form of entering a city’s top restaurants and bars. She says that seeing Uncle Nearest appearing as the base spirit in these popular establishments’ cocktails, as opposed to being relegated to a menu’s long list of standalone whiskey brands, indicates mass acceptance and appeal. “That's not something that you would do if you're trying to market towards aficionados,” she says, emphasizing the importance of average patrons over critics and awards. The first chapter The brand’s story begins with a planned book project. In 2016, Weaver originally went to Tennessee to interview Green’s descendants to tell the story of how their ancestor helped create what has become one of the most famous American whiskey labels. While the research all “tied back” to Jack Daniel's, Weaver realized that she needed to place Nearest Green in a separate context. To do otherwise would muddle both men’s identities, ultimately rendering a disservice to their respective legacies. Still, the question remains at the heart of the story: why is Green’s narrative not as universally known as that of Jack Daniel's? Simply put, the familiarity of Daniel’s story was long established with the masses, partly due to its ownership by spirits conglomerate Brown-Forman since 1956. Therefore, the Uncle Nearest team had to overcome the challenge of raising awareness of Green’s legacy first. “We really had to focus folks on Nearest. That wasn't easy because it's just easier for [people] to talk about what they already know,” Weaver says. One vital way the brand stresses his significance is by solely focusing on the man behind the name. When you visit the distillery, everything you see is related solely to Green, his family and his legacy. “That is one thing I think that has shifted as we've gone along. Jack was such an amazing human being and we give him just an enormous amount of credit for who he was. But my job is not to cement the legacy of Jack's; they've got that covered. My job is to cement the legacy of Nearest." Lifting today's "Nearest" Greens Even as she solidifies Green’s name in the drinks world, Weaver is continuing to build her own legacy by supporting today’s craft spirits makers. In June 2021, Weaver started the $50 million dollar Uncle Nearest Venture Fund to invest in fast-growing, minority-founded and owned spirit brands. The fund’s first two investments were Equiano Rum, the world's first Afro-Caribbean rum founded by Ian Burrell and Aaisha Dadral, and founder Jackie Summers, the creator of Jack From Brooklyn, Inc.—the first known Black-owned distillery in America post-Prohibition—and Sorel Liqueur. The Uncle Nearest Venture Fund is set to determine and announce its third investment soon. “I am not in a rush to just put the money somewhere. I want to make sure that every brand has the team in place, that it has the right kind of founder—the focused founder that is ready to build a legacy brand," Weaver says. "For me, it's a matter of quality, not quantity.” In terms of the near future of Uncle Nearest, its current bottle will soon become a collector’s item within the next couple of months. The company is rolling out new bottles with new labels before the end of this year. On the marketing front, Uncle Nearest is preparing to run new TV commercials. “Everyone talks about 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and that the attention span is too low and all the rest of that stuff,” Weaver says. “We've discovered [that] if you give people an actual story that brings them in, their attention span is not short at all. We have a completion rate on our 60-second commercials of over 72 percent.” As Weaver’s own profile rises in tandem with Uncle Nearest’s brand, she is making sure that her own individuality isn’t lost in the mix. During her tour of restaurants and bars, she says that she’s found both herself and her purpose. But she’s wary that it’s for the right reasons. “I am targeting everybody,” Weaver reiterates. “You’re not going to box me into a demographic of a bunch of dudes who are white males in between this age and [that], and you're not going to box me in [with] all African-Americans. I'm going after everybody who's spent $60 on a spirit, period. From market to market, that juxtaposition against one another is just unreal, but it's what we set out to do. The actual realization of it and seeing it is really exciting.” Knob Creek’s New Short Films Pair Whiskey With Guided Reflections Led by a Meditation Expert