Pittsburghers have a chance to hear the true story most still don’t know — how a slave taught Jack Daniel to make whiskey — when Threadbare Cider in Spring Garden hosts writer and entrepreneur Fawn Weaver for a talk from 6 to 8 p.m. March 5.
Ms. Weaver is the keynote speaker earlier that day at the American Craft Spirits Association convention and vendor show at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh hotel, Downtown.
But later she’ll share with the public the story of Nathan “Nearest” Green. The enslaved black man in the 1850s and 1860s worked at a family farm and distillery in Tennessee, where Jack Daniel learned from him. In a story that the famous Jack Daniel’s Distillery only recently has been more publicly telling, Mr. Daniel later hired the newly free Mr. Green as his distillery’s first head distiller, making him the country’s first documented African-American master distiller.
“I think we’re in a cultural moment ... where we’re finally recovering our stories,” says Ms. Weaver. The best-selling author who founded the Happy Wives Club was captivated by the idea of a black man and white man working together in the South even before the Civil War. While deeply documenting it last year, she found the original farm where Mr. Green and Mr. Daniel made whiskey near Lynchburg, Tenn., and she and her entertainment executive husband, Keith, bought it and moved into a neighboring house. She’s since started the nonprofit Nearest Green Foundation, as well as co-founded a company that markets Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey and supports the foundation.
Made under contract by other distilleries starting this past summer, the quickly popular whiskey — including a brand-new silver, or clear, version — isn’t yet available in Pennsylvania state stores. But the company soon will be making and aging the whiskey itself at a distillery, tasting room and music venue it’s building in phases on a former horse farm and sales arena north of Lynchburg in Shelbyville.
Plans call for a barn to be turned into the Nearest Green History Walk, an interactive gallery that tells the history of Nearest Green and other African-American contributors to the whiskey industry, such as six slaves at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
Nearest Green Distillery will be on the Tennessee Whiskey Trail, which launched last year. The company believes Mr. Green was one of the pioneers of the Lincoln County Process, the charcoal filtering method, named for where he lived and worked, that’s still used on Jack Daniels and most spirits labeled as “Tennessee whiskey.” As the story is told on the Jack Daniel’s website, Mr. Green’s sons and grandsons also worked at that distillery, and Ms. Weaver found other relatives who did, and even some who still do.
The foundation plans to commemorate the Green family with the Nearest Green Memorial Park in the heart of Lynchburg, and has started a scholarship fund for descendants, funded in part by proceeds from a 50th-anniversary edition of “Jack Daniel’s Legacy,” an official biography that Ben A. Green (no relation) published in 1967. Ms. Weaver worked with the author’s family and wrote a new foreword. Meanwhile, she’s writing a book of her own about Nearest Green.
Her passion for this work comes through even on a phone interview, in which she stresses that recovering and telling these lost stories is not only inspiring for African-Americans, but for all Americans, and can help heal current racial divides. “I think there are more stories like this,” she says, adding with her bubbly laugh how much she would love if her appearance helped reveal one here.
Meredith Meyer Grelli, co-owner of Threadbare and Wigle distillery, says hosting Ms. Weaver fits right in with her company’s current efforts to increase the diversity of both its own workforce and its customers. Ms. Grelli says, “I think I have a heightened sensitivity to this because both of our brands are based on historical white guys” — John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman and Phillip Wigle. It is reaching out to various community groups and schools to get the word out to a broad audience on this event, and they’re planning a public diversity forum for March 30.
“We want to make sure our first step was listening and understanding,” says manager of training, education and loyalty programs Teresa DeFlitch. One person who is part of it is Mike Potter, who said he was set to launch on Monday his online magazine dedicated to celebrating and bringing more diversity to the craft beer scene: Black Brew Culture (blackbrewculture.com). Also coming are Celeste Beatty of Harlem Brewing Co. and Rodney Dotson and Reggie Jones of Atlanta-based distillery Rams & Parrots.
At her Threadbare talk, Ms. Weaver will be sampling some Nearest Green whiskeys. A ticket is $6 and includes a cocktail. Food will be available for purchase. Get details and tickets at threadbarecider.com/event/fawn-weaver-uncle-nearest.
The American Craft Spirits Association gathering runs from March 4-6. Learn more at americancraftspirits.org/convention. The ACSA and the Pennsylvania Distillers Guild will present a consumer tasting event called the Pennsylvania Toast from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. March 5 at the Sen. John Heinz History Center in the Strip District, which is showing the traveling exhibit, “American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.” Tickets, $59 in advance or $69 at the door, let you sample the liquids from more than a dozen local and Pennsylvania distilleries and talk with the people who make them.
Bob Batz Jr.: bbatz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1930 and on Twitter @bobbatzjr.
First Published: February 23, 2018, 11:30 a.m.
