‘Now, There’s a Delicious Whiskey’: Beyoncé Shouts Out Uncle Nearest, the Blossoming Brand That’s Sharing an Important Story

Uncle Nearest founder and CEO Fawn Weaver speaks at the 2024 Forbes Power Women’s Summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday in New York. (Photo by Efren Landaos/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

In a profile with GQ published Tuesday, Beyoncé, who recently launched her very own whiskey, a rye named SirDavis, gave a shoutout to a different American whiskey brand: Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey.

“Making liquor has been in Southern families like mine for many generations,” the singer said, according to GQ. “The Jack Daniel’s famous recipe? That was heavily influenced by a Black man named Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green. He was a former slave who became Jack Daniel’s master distiller. Now, there’s a delicious whiskey, Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, named after him, that is run by two women—Nearest Green’s great-great-granddaughter, Victoria Eady Butler, alongside Fawn Weaver. Victoria, in true legacy form to what Mr. Nearest started, is one of the first Black female master blenders in American whiskey.

Hopefully, this story, along with others like Victoria’s and Fawn’s, and now mine, will continue to open more doors.”

With Weaver at the helm, Uncle Nearest has burst onto the spirits scene in a major way since being founded in 2016. Named for Nearest Green, whose story had been all but erased from the annals of history until Weaver’s research uncovered his seismic contributions to whiskey, Uncle Nearest Distillery lies less than 25 miles from the famous Jack Daniel Distillery, whose history was so impacted by Nathan Green.

Earlier this year, Weaver published a book covering her research of Green and her formation of the distillery.

As for Beyoncé and SirDavis, she named the brand after her paternal great-grandfather, Davis Hogue, who was a farmer and a moonshiner during Prohibition.

In the GQ profile, Beyoncé also gave some background on her history with whiskey. Click here to read more about her origins with the spirit.

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