Jack Daniel’s line of Tennessee whiskeys is one of the largest selling groups of distilled spirit beverages sold as whiskey in the world. What separates it from other competitor brands is the refining and aging process that was taught to Jack Daniel at an early age by a slave named Nathan “Nearest” Green in the 1850’s. With Green as the master distiller and Daniel as the businessman the brand grew and the business prospered. Here’s how it all came together.
Jasper “Jack” Daniel: The exact date of Jack Daniel’s birth is not clear, but it did occur sometime in the mid to late 1840’s. He was his mother’s 10th child and was a toddler when she died in 1847. Jack’s father remarried and had three more children before he died in the Civil War. Jack did not get along at all with his stepmother, and he ran away from home at the age of seven. He was taken in by Dan Call, a lay preacher and moonshine distiller in Lynchburg, Tennessee. At the request of Call, Nathan “Nearest” Green, Call’s master distiller, taught Daniel how whiskey was made. In time he became an adept salesman selling the distillery’s products throughout the area. In 1875 Daniel received an inheritance from his father’s estate, and together with Call, founded a legally registered distillery in Moore County, Tennessee. They added the name Jack Daniel to their products giving it the famous brand that’s still in use. In 1884 Call pulled out of the business turning it over to Daniel, who purchased the land that the distillery was located on. In 1897 he distinguished his product from the competition by switching the output’s container to the square shaped bottle used for today’s product. His whiskey won the gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, sparking a major surge in popularity. Daniel was never married, and died of blood poisoning in 1911. His nephew, Lemue Motlow, hired originally as the bookkeeper, received the company as a gift from Daniel before he died.
Nathan “Nearest” Green: Nathan Green was born in 1820, in Maryland, but it is not clear if he was born into slavery or became enslaved at a later date. He was hired out to work for Dan Call by a firm that owned slaves for that purpose. Being no older than thirty, Green was Call’s master distiller when he showed Daniel how the still worked and the product was actually made. After The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed all slaves in the Confederate States, Green continued to work for Call running the still and making the whiskey, with Jack Daniel, his younger assistant, learning the business. Soon after the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 permanently ending slavery in the U.S., Green adopted the name “Nearest.” Two of Green’s sons were then employed in the business beginning the series of seven generations of Green’s descendants working for the company. Green was married to Harriet Green, and together they had eleven children including nine sons and two daughters. It is not known exactly when Green died, but he was listed in the 1880 census.
The Lincoln County Process: The distilling process that Nathan Green taught Jack Daniel came to be known as the Lincoln County Process, named after the county where the distillery was located. It’s essentially charcoal filtering, but the particular technique is believed to have been carried over from West Africa where it was used to filter drinking water. The process began with stacks of wood from sugar maple trees that were first soaked in the raw ingredients—a mash of corn and grains that was measured at about 140 proof (70% alcohol). The wood was then charred by burning it under large hoods that inhibited sparks from escaping, and then sprayed with water to limit the amount of actual combustion that took place thereby forming charcoal. The charred wood was ground into small pellets and then packed into the filtering vats. The remaining mash was then poured into the vats through the charcoal where the impurities were filtered out, and then loaded into charred oak barrels for aging. Other distilleries that used the Lincoln County Process had slight variations from the process that Green taught Daniel. Charcoal filtering of whiskeys was done as early as 1825 by Alfred Eaton in nearby Tullahoma, Tennessee, but the practice may have begun earlier from somewhere outside of the state. In a twist of irony, the boundaries of Lincoln County were changed in 1871, and most of the distilleries that used the Lincoln County Process were no longer in Lincoln County.
Tennessee Whiskey: Tennessee Whiskey as a genre is straight whiskey (no additives) that’s produced in the state of Tennessee. In some trade circles it is referred to as bourbon—also straight whiskey, but Tennessee distillers prefer the label “Tennessee Whiskey” to distinguish it from bourbon that was distilled in Kentucky and Illinois among other states. The label itself became valuable, and in 2013 the state of Tennessee added some strict regulations to the distillation of all whiskeys using the Tennessee Whiskey label. In addition to being produced in the state of Tennessee and using the Lincoln County Process, the products needed to meet the standards commonly used for aging and bottling bourbon including the mix of raw materials. The reason for the extra regulation was to protect the label from being abused by cheaper, lower quality whiskeys that were sold under the Tennessee Whiskey label. The debate went on as some smaller distilleries complained that the legislation required their product to be made by a process very similar to that used by Jack Daniel. Some producers claimed that the Jack Daniel distillery was trying to push out the smaller competition. However, the Jack Daniel distillery’s response was that stringent requirements were applied to makers of Scotch Whiskey, and French Champagne thus preserving those products’ quality in the market place. State law also prohibited the manufacture of distilled spirits in all except three counties in Tennessee—Lincoln, Moore, and Coffee. As this rule plus the stringent quality requirements caused a number of smaller distilleries to go out of business, the state relented and changed that law to permit production of Tennessee whiskey in forty-four out of ninety-five counties.
The Jack Daniel’s Brand: The state of Tennessee launched its own version of statewide prohibition in 1910, and has numerous dry counties to this day (including Moore County where Jack Daniel’s distillery is located). The company tried to move production in 1910 to other locations outside of Tennessee, but the moves failed owing primarily to quality problems at the new sites that prevented any of the products from ever being sold. Prohibition was lifted with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933, but state prohibition laws remained in place. Thanks to Motlow, who became a state senator, the Tennessee state prohibition laws were repealed in 1938 allowing the distillery to restart production. More problems rose during World War II when the federal government banned the manufacture of whiskey in an attempt to preserve the corn and grains raw materials for the war effort. In 1947 Motlow resumed production after the ban was lifted when good quality corn was readily available. Motlow died in September, 1947, soon after the distillery had returned to full production. It was then owned and managed by his heirs until it was sold to the Brown-Forman Corporation in 1956. The Lynchburg distillery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Conclusions: Not much had been known to history about Nearest Green, the first black master distiller in the country and the guiding force behind the great Jack Daniel’s distillery’s product. In recent times author and historian Fawn Weaver, did a major amount of research for a book project, and brought to light much of the activities known today about Nearest Green plus the young Jack Daniel and the early distillery processes. She also put together in Green’s commemoration the Nearest Green Distillery in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and the Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey brand in 2017.
Sources: History.com, How an Enslaved Man Helped Jack Daniel Develop His Famous Whiskey, By Aaron Randle, January 22, 2024.
Wikipedia, Jack Daniel’s.
Wikipedia, Nathan “Nearest” Green.
Wikipedia, Lincoln County Process.
Photo by Laura Sant for Liquor.com