Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey has formed a $50 million venture capital fund to invest in fast-growing spirits brands founded and owned by entrepreneurs of color and women.
What is Uncle Nearest?
Launched in 2017 by entrepreneur Fawn Weaver, Shelbyville, Tennessee-based Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey is the country’s fastest growing whiskey brand, according to data from IWSR. The label makes three expressions — 1820 Single Barrel Edition, 1856 Premium Aged Whiskey and 1884 Small Batch Whiskey — that are sold in more than 250,000 points-of-sale across all 50 states and 12 countries.
The company takes its name from Nathan “Nearest” Green, a Black pioneer in American spirits making. While enslaved, Green is credited for helping teach Jack Daniel about the trade in the antebellum years, before eventually serving as the first master distiller for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey after the end of the Civil War.
Prior to today’s announcement, the distillery has made supporting social justice and racial equity in the spirits business a core component of its brand. Last July, Uncle Nearest and Jack Daniel’s each committed $5 million to launch the Nearest & Jack Advancement Initiative, a suite of educational resources that includes a distilling certification program, mentorship services and a business incubation program.
What is the concept behind the fund?
Backed to the tune of $50 million, the Uncle Nearest Venture Fund will invest in “rapidly growing, minority-founded and owned spirit brands.” The fund’s announcement comes on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre in 1921, in which white mobs razed a Black neighborhood and business district known as Black Wall Street. This week, President Joe Biden visited Tulsa to mark the anniversary of the attack, in which anywhere from 100 to 300 people were killed and hundreds of structures burned or destroyed, according to the 2001 Race Riot Commission Report.
“On June 1, 1921, an entire community of wealthy and successful African Americans was wiped out in a matter of hours. We are talking about 35 square blocks known as Black Wall Street,” Weaver said in a press release. “As an African American, learning about that history broke my heart because we, as a people, were really onto something in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We were lifting one another up and creating wealth within our own community, and then showing others how to do it for themselves. We cannot go back and undo the past, but I do believe we have full power over our future, and that recreating a Black Wall Street of sorts within the spirits industry is a great place to start.”
The fund’s board of directors includes names spanning across a wide scope of businesses and expertise: Keith Weaver, Executive Vice President of Global Public Policy and External Affairs for Sony Pictures Entertainment; Lee Moulton, Head of Partnerships for Google; Carolyn Feinstein, former CMO for Dropbox; Mark McCallum, former Chief Brands Officer for Brown-Forman; Kevin Asato, Portfolio Management for Republic National Distribution Company; and Minott Wessinger, founder of McKenzie River Corporation.
What brands are receiving investment?
The fund has named U.K.-based brand Equiano and Jack From Brooklyn, Inc., makers of Sorel Liqueur, as its first investments, receiving $2 million each. The former company, launched in 2019, bills itself as “the world’s first Afro-Caribbean rum” in offering limited batch blends from boutique distilleries Gray’s (Mauritius) and Foursquare (Barbados). Meanwhile, Jack From Brooklyn is run by Jackie Summers, who became the first Black person in the U.S. with a distilling license when he opened Sorel Liqueur in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood in 2012.
Despite his product’s popularity, Summers’ own experience in struggling to secure funding for Sorel — several large companies reneged on agreed contracts, he told Esquire last year — reflects the challenge that the Uncle Nearest Venture Fund is aimed at solving.
“Most people don’t know how expensive it is to create and grow a premium spirit brand in America,” said Summers, who will be reintroducing Sorel to the market this summer initially as an exclusive on ReserveBar.com before a broader retail rollout this summer with distribution through Republic National Distribution Company, Breakthru Beverage Group, Empire Distributors and others.
“I wasn’t willing to compromise on the quality and I did everything I could to raise the money to keep Sorel alive, including pitching the brand to the CEOs of some of the most well-known spirit conglomerates. Every single one turned me down,” he said. “Many do not know this, but I went homeless for about 18 months as I pounded the pavement to continue growing my business. I never gave up because I knew it was special and that one day, someone would be willing to invest in it and in me. The moment the Uncle Nearest Venture Fund agreed to do so, we were ready – we’d only been waiting on capital.”
Securing investment and financial resources to scale has been a persistent challenge for Black and minority-owned food and beverage brands. In an open letter to the industry issued last June, Jomaree Pinkard, co-founder and CEO of Hella Cocktail Co., challenged VCs and private equity firms to add more Black-owned businesses to their portfolios.
“The main point is the lack of access and that lack of networking and the lack of the investment community to be looking,” he told BevNET at the time. “There’s plenty of Black people that have the wherewithal and the ability to be crushing it out here, right? But maybe they don’t have the chance.”