By Don Valentine
Jack Daniel’s is undisputedly Kentucky’s best whiskey. It was created by the first Black master Distiller Nathan “Nearest” Green. This is a true but rarely shared vignette of American history. “I don’t think it was ever a conscious decision” to leave the Greens out of the company’s story,” Phil Epps, the global brand director at Brown-Forman, told The New York Times in a 2016 interview. The Brown-Forman Corporation has owned the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee since 1956. Nathan’s obscurity was a side effect of the post Civil War “Jim Crow” marketing. History shows that including a Black man in the story would have been deleterious to profit.
The biography About Nearest Green notes, “… sometime around the mid-1800s, he began working on the farm of a country preacher and distiller in Lincoln County. Nearest was a skilled distiller, specializing in a process that gave his whiskey a unique smoothness, known as sugar maple charcoal filtering. Called the ‘Lincoln County’ process, it is believed by many whiskey and food historians to have been brought in by slaves, who were already using charcoal to filter their water and purify their foods in West Africa. Nearest was such a skilled distiller, and his sugar maple charcoal-filtered whiskey was the best in the area.”
“In the mid-185os, a young white boy came to work at the farm where Nearest operated as the master distiller. As the years went by, the young boy continued learning from Nearest and eventually became old enough to begin selling this unique whiskey in other towns near Lynchburg. He sold to soldiers during the civil war and found he was a great salesperson and entrepreneur.
Over time, that young White chore boy moved from the property and took his growing whiskey business with him. Although Nearest retired and did not go to his new distillery, Nearest’s sons, Lewis, Eli and George all continued the tradition of making the best whiskey in the area and went to work with the young man at his new place. Nearest’s grandsons, Charlie and Ott also went to work for the new distillery. That young White boy, who became a brilliant businessman, went on to be known as one of the most famous whiskey makers in the world; his legal name was Jasper Newton, those of us in Lynchburg know him as Uncle Jack, the rest of the world knows him as Jack Daniel.” To learn more read Black author Fawn Weaver’s Love and Whiskey.