A popular whiskey brand has been slapped with a $100 million lawsuit for allegedly not paying back its loans, according to court documents.
Nearest Green Distillery – a Black-owned business in Tennessee that sells Uncle Nearest premium whiskey across the nation, from anywhere between $50 to over $100 per bottle – has been accused of breaching loan agreements with their lender, according to a suit obtained by WSMV.
Farm Credit Mid-America, which is based in Louisville, accuses the company's founders, Fawn Weaver and husband, Keith Weaver, of defaulting on multiple loans, refusing to hand over adequate information, failing to pay principal and interest payments, and using proceeds of a loan to purchase a $2 million Martha's Vineyard home while mortgaging the property to another lender.
The Weavers were sued in federal court on July 28, according to the court documents.
Farm Credit alleges a myriad of other wrongdoings and is demanding a repayment that includes accrued interest on loans amounting to $108,245,828.22.
The loans company says that Nearest Green Distillery has been “in default under the Loans since as early as January 2, 2024, and has continued to incur further defaults over the last eighteen months,” according to court documents.
The most recent default came as a revolving loan was not paid in full by the time it matured at the end of last month.
Furthermore, Nearest Green alleges that the lawsuit's allegations are untrue.
Weaver herself has also confronted the suit online in a social media video posted Sunday, where she said, “Uncle Nearest is stronger than ever.”
Nearest Green rose to $1 billion in valuation after its creation in 2019. Still, the lawsuit is likely to be a setback for the unicorn startup, a moniker for a startup valued at over $1 billion, which is privately owned and not listed on a stock market.
Fawn Weaver, who is the face of the business, boasts nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram. In 2017, The Daily Mail spoke to her after she published her New York Times bestseller, Love & Whiskey: The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest.
Nearest Green holds a past that is intrinsically connected to the Jack Daniel’s brand, to which Weaver is emotionally invested after writing about the two companies’ history of their union in her book.
In the 1800s, an unlikely friendship was formed between a young Jack Daniel and a young slave. The slave was named Nathan Green; he was known more commonly as “Nearest.”
Daniel had been orphaned at 16 and forced to work as a chore boy for a distillery owner and preacher in his hometown of Lynchburg, Tennessee, named Dan Call. Call had enslaved Green around the same period.
It was during those years that Nearest became Daniel’s mentor and teacher, showing him the gruelling process of charcoal mellowing, the signature of all Tennessee whiskey, which became the process for brewing the famous Jack Daniel’s product.
As life went on, Green went on to become one of the wealthiest and highest-regarded African American men in Tennessee. He was also the first master distiller of Jack Daniel’s whiskey.
Green’s name, however, disappeared from the Jack Daniel’s lore, even though it remained common knowledge in the small community of Lynchburg.
Weaver, who spent time researching the history, made it her mission to get Green’s name the recognition it deserved.
She wrote her book after spending months living in Lynchburg and eventually purchased Dan Call’s farm, where Daniel and Green met over 150 years ago.
It was Green’s legacy and Weaver’s vested interest in his untold story that ultimately inspired Nearest Green.
The Independent contacted Uncle Nearest and Farm Credit Mid-America for comment.
