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May 5, 2025 10 mins
In this captivating episode, Brandi Harvey sits down with Fawn Weaver—serial entrepreneur, CEO of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, and master storyteller—for a conversation about legacy, leadership, and rewriting the narrative for generations to come. 🥃✨

Fawn opens up about building one of the fastest-growing whiskey brands in American history, honoring untold Black history, and what it truly means to lead with purpose, courage, and integrity.This episode is a blueprint for anyone ready to break barriers, build legacy, and stand in their power.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What started off as a story that was supposed to
become a book has become a two billion dollar business. Yeah,
one of the largest black land owners in the state
of Tennessee, the largest bar in the world. Nothing you
do is ever small scale.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Everybody's not built for this. When I think about my day,
I can't really think of many people that could do
what I do, not because they aren't extraordinary, but the
amount of fortitude it takes. Last year, twenty five million
dollars worth of barrels is what I laid down. I
can't bottle those. I can't make money for at least
four more years. That's why most never make it. When

(00:37):
you come to Nearest Green Distillery, there's a reason it's
the seventh most visited distillery in the world, and there's
four thousand distilleries.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
In seventh in the world, seventh in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
A lot of the things that we think our race
is economics. Because everyone is looking at our current president
and talking about the fact that he's wiping out DEI.
We have to understand that we are a country that
was built on capitalism. We keep trying to give our
country morals. We have to know how to operate based

(01:07):
on how it was built, and it comes down to
money and power. It always has. We've done everything that
we could to failed adoptions, a failed surrogacy. One of
the things that we never did was assume that God
was going to give us children. Children would have competed
with the purpose God set out for me.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Society has said we're here to birth children, but many
of us are here to birth vision.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Welcome to vont Empower's talks. So we don't just scratch
the surface. We dive deep into the lives of some
of the world's most interesting change makers. I'm your host,
Brandy Harvey. Y'all, we got her back. She is back
in the house. It's a do over, It's a second
time home. Fond Weaver is the founder and CEO of
Uncle Nero's. As the world's first major spirit brand to

(01:58):
be led by a black back woman, it is the
fastest growing independent whiskey brand in US history and the
fastest growing black owned spear brand of all time. For
over five years, Uncle Nears has been the most awarded
bourbon or American whisky, and in twenty twenty three, Nearest
Green Distillery became the most successful Black owned distillery globally,

(02:19):
having crossing the one hundred million dollar mark in sales.
Since then, Uncle Nears has been valued at over two
billion dollars. Fawn has been named Food and Wines, Drink Innovators,
Time Magazines, thirty one People Changing the South, and in
twenty twenty four, she was awarded the Distinguished Patriotic Award
from the Veterans of Foreign Affairs, and she is one

(02:40):
of the largest Black land owners in the state of Tennessee.
Fawn believes who you partner with in life is one
of the determining factors between success and mediocrity. Bond Empower's
Talk's Welcome Wife, entrepreneur, investor and keeper of the Nearest
Green Story Fawn Weaver to the show. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
That was quite the intro.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I mean for such a quite the one, sad.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
I mean, that is such an intro. You while I
was cleaning out the Fredos, you.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Know, you got into the stash fond you know, but
you're at home. So that's what happens when you come
visit family. Yes, you get into the cookie jar. Yeah,
you get into the sash. I am so honored that
you were here in the sea. I told you before
we started you are. You're such an inspiration because when

(03:29):
I went to your book tour in Atlanta, you said
to the room, this is not your average book tour.
You said, when you ask questions, here ask questions to
serve the entire room. And I took that and I said,
I want to have conversations that serve our entire community,
and so here you are.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
I love it. I love it. I mean, largest one
of the largest black landowners in the state of Tennessee,
largest advertiser in the Nashville Airport. Nothing you do is
ever small scale. Everything is big.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
No, We're the largest Grand Champagne vineyard owner in the
city of Cognac, France.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
I think we're the only Americans that actually they have
approved land purchased there.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
And this is within what the last two years, right, Yeah, yeah,
I mean nothing small about what you do.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
You know, life would be a lot easier if I
thought small. No, seriously, you know, people, I used to
always tell people dream bigger, fail harder, and I still do,
but I do recognize that the level of it is
much more challenging. If you just think small, you can

(04:43):
kind of go through life just like be bopping around
and just enjoying the basics of being alive and the
level of joy that comes with that. And I enjoy
what I do so much, but I think that what
I what I maneuver through on any daily basis, would
take most people out. So it's a different kind of joy.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, a different kind of joy. But this is I mean,
from childhood to your early career in PR to your
first investments, every step that you've made, I mean has
been sheer, grit and determination.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I think I was eighteen and I had like ten employees.
It was absurd, and that was that was with the
PR firm. It's just I've always been that way and
figuring it out as I go. I've always been building
the plane as it was flying. It's just how I'm wired.
And but I think you find that most of Americans
titans were building the plane as it was flying.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah. I think that's what scares most people though, as
it should.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, like everybody's not built for this.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
When I think about my day, I can't really think
of very many more people that could do what I do,
not because they aren't extraordinary, but the amount of fortitude
it takes to do what I do is is different.
It's a different level. There's levels to this. Yeah, I'm

(06:13):
somewhere in that nine to ten level.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
You're definitely in a nine to ten level because what
started off as a story that was supposed to become
a book in the last ten years has become a
two billion dollar business. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was.
It was bigger than a book.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
It was bigger than a book.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
It was bigger.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Forbes has it at one, Forbes has it at one
point one. But it is different when people are coming
for you and trying to convince you to.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Sell the I mean they asked for two billion. Yeah,
I think so that that lets you know what has
been valued at. Yeah, what people see in the marketplace.
I mean you get into the Whiskey spirits business really
by trusting your gut, because this story that led you
was really fuel by grief when you lost your niece

(07:00):
and you threw yourself into this story of Uncle Neeres
after finding it, you know, in Singapore, and it falls
in your lap. But then it takes you on this
journey to go visit, to immerse yourself, to uncover the story,
and then you say, I'm gonna I'm gonna make whiskey.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well, the thing is is that when you look at
Love and Whiskey, I mean it's New York Times bestseller
twelve times over right, And you can look at that
and say, and I think we just won the NAACP
Award for it. I can look at it and say,
the book is the book is a success, one hundred
thousand copies sold. Whatever you want, however, the book is

(07:41):
something that people are going to enjoy greatly today. It
is a great book. I enjoyed reading it myself. For
the audio. You know you have a great book when
you yourself enjoy reading.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
It well written phenomenal books or the audio.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
But the reality is is there'll be thousands more books
that come out thish ye. When it's made into a film,
that film will drop, and another film will drop the
same day, and the next day, and the day after
that and the day after that, and so then the
question becomes the story of Neares Green was told so
openly at Jack Daniel Distillery until seventy eight, and then

(08:17):
the story disappeared until I brought it forth again for
the masses. And so you have to look at it
and say, if the story could disappear once and can
disappear again. And as the keeper of the story for
this generation, if you will, I really truly look at
it as my responsibility to pass this to the next

(08:37):
generation in a way that it cannot be erased and
that couldn't be done with a book or a movie.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
And we know this.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
I asked this. What I use this as a point.
Almost everywhere I go is usually if on the leven
Whiskey tour, there might be three hundred and fifty four
hundred people in the room, and I will ask how
many of you saw hidden figures? Every hand will go
up every single hit, which is amazing game the way
every hand will go and I will ask them what
are the names of the women that Octavio Spencer and

(09:06):
Otavia Spencer, Janelle Money and Taraji p Henson played? And
most can't name a single one?

Speaker 1 (09:13):
And you'll usually have one or.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Two people in there that will say Catherine Watson, Katherine Watts,
Gota like, you know, they'll kind of fun, but that's
a movie that every single person in that room watched
and they can't. I didn't. We all left that movie
theater knowing the same three women we knew before we
walked in there, and so when you look at something
like the story, the reality is with entertainment, people are

(09:35):
the story is going to be told, but people are
going to know the actors when they leave out of there.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's so much deeper than I mean. This story extends
generations because you have Victoria Edie Butler, who is the
great great granddaughter of Nearest Green, who is now the
master blender for Uncle Nears, award winning blender for the business.
And I want you to really talk about why it

(10:06):
is so important to tell this story because many people
when they kind of get ear in wind of it,
they hear, oh, Jack Daniels had a slave, and his
slave created the whiskey recipe, and they run with that story.
But that is not the true story.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
It's not the true story. Number one, there were fourteen
distilleries and a sixteen
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