Black woman whose whiskey brand made history crossing $100M in sales now owns a bank

Abu Mubarik | Face2FaceAfrica

Before turning 19, Fawn Weaver lived in three homeless shelters. In between living in shelters
and coming to own her own house, she spent time reading the biographies of successful
entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Charles Schwab, Andrew Mellon, J.D.
Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan.
Starting with a condo in 1991 when she was only 18, Weaver created a path that would lead her
to become a serial entrepreneur. She worked three jobs while in school to be able to pay for her
first real estate. By 2000, she had saved enough to buy two duplexes.
Since then, she and her husband, Keith Weaver, have been flipping multiple properties which
have become their main source of wealth in the last twenty years. She also created the whiskey
brand Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, which recently announced that its sales exceeded $100
million through October 2022, making it one of the most successful Black-owned distilleries in
the world. The whiskey brand said it is expected to more than double that total by the end of
2023.
In 2021, the brand became the best-selling African-American-owned and founded spirit brand in
the U.S. after selling nearly 1.5 million bottles of its sought-after super-premium whiskey. The
company’s whiskey portfolio of seven offerings is available at its distillery in Shelbyville,
Tennessee, and in all 50 states, territories, and districts nationwide, it said in a statement.
Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey was founded by Weaver to honor the memory of Nearest
Green, an enslaved African American who helped Jack Daniel to start his distillery.
“To reach this and every other milestone on our horizon, we continue to push nonstop. Every
penny this company has earned has gone back into the business, as well as to put Nearest
Green’s college-age descendants through college and to invest in minority-owned businesses
and entrepreneurs through our Black Business Booster program (BBB), the Nearest and Jack
Advancement Initiative (NJAI) and Uncle Nearest Ventures,” said Weaver.
The serial entrepreneur is now a co-owner of a bank. In a recent post on Instagram, Weaver
announced that she has bought a bank located in Tennessee.
“So…we bought a bank,” Weaver said in her caption. “Actually, even better, we bought the
building and became the landlord of Keith’s parent’s bank.”

This article was originally posted to Face2FaceAfrica