Meet the American who taught Jack Daniel to make whiskey: Nearest Green, Tennessee slave, master distiller
Fox News
Nathan Nearest Green was an enslaved distiller who taught young Jack Daniel to make Tennessee whiskey. Green became the first master distiller for Jack Daniel's Distillery in 1866.
"We think there was a special bond between Jack and Nearest." — Jack Daniel's historian Nelson Eddy "Nearest was greatly respected in Lynchburg as a mentor and the best whiskey maker in the area." — NearestGreen.com "He wasn’t a privileged boy. He was a worker, like Nearest." — NearestGreen.com. "I would consider Nearest a mentor for Jack … He was heavily influenced by Nearest in many ways." — Nelson Eddy "There has never been drop of Jack Daniel's made without a member of the Green family working somewhere in the company." — Charles K. Cowdery Kerry J. Byrne is a lifestyle reporter with Fox News Digital.
It was there that the middle-aged, African-American distiller taught a poor, hardworking and curious pre-teen Scots-Irish boy named Jack Daniel how to make whiskey on a barnyard still in backwoods America.