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The CEO of embattled whiskey company Uncle Nearest alleges that an ongoing legal battle with a lender amounts to a smear campaign. Central to it, according to Fawn Weaver, who is also the founder, is a Martha’s Vineyard property the company purchased in 2023.
“Martha’s Vineyard was a smear campaign tactic,” Weaver said during a fireside chat at the Inc. 5000 conference titled, “Reclaiming Your Company in Turbulent Times.” “Their hope was that the judge would see it, would accept the smear and would turn over keys of my company to them.”
Whiskey company and distillery Uncle Nearest has been in receivership since August after defaulting on $108 million worth of loans from the lender, Farm Credit Mid-America. Receiverships are powerful legal tools, which involve appointing a third party or “receiver” to oversee and protect a company’s assets and guide restructuring to avoid bankruptcy, according to Investopedia.
A Black- and woman-owned company, Uncle Nearest was named after Uncle Nearest Green, a formerly enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel to make whiskey in the 1800s. Weaver learned of Green from 2016 reporting in The New York Times, after which she began researching his story. She ultimately wrote a book about Nearest and her own journey, called Love and Whiskey, and founded the company alongside her husband Keith Weaver.
Today, Weaver says Uncle Nearest is the second best selling Tennessee whiskey in the U.S. after Jack Daniel’s, boasts numerous awards, and has continued to grow sales in spite of an overall downturn in alcohol sales post-pandemic. The company also has made early advances into vodka and cognac, and owns a farm in Tennessee and a chateau in France (for the cognac foray), among other properties, according to Weaver.
Weaver claims the inclusion of the Martha’s Vineyard property in Farm Credit’s complaint comes down to reputational damage and an effort to “taint the judge, who’s going to be white in eastern Tennessee.”
Martha’s Vineyard is home to historically Black neighborhoods and has a legacy of generational Black homeownership that dates back to the early 19th century, according to the Vineyard Gazette’s reporting on Martha’s Vineyard: Race, Property, and the Power of Place. To this day, prominent figures including former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama and director Spike Lee reportedly own property there.
“If you can get the judge to believe that we misappropriated funds to buy a property, a vacation home—let’s be clear, I’m from California, what I’m not going to do is buy a vacation home that’s not on the water in a town that is not sunny nine months out of the year,” she said.
An August filing from Weaver and Uncle Nearest opposing the receivership request addresses the Martha’s Vineyard property directly. It claims that Farm Credit’s receivership motion “ignores critical context,” and states that the lender did not take adequate legal steps to establish its claim on the property as collateral in case of a default on the loans. It was a point Weaver reiterated at the conference.
“They didn’t have security over any of our collateral. And the question becomes, why not? Why did you not ask to perfect seven of our eight pieces of real estate? Martha’s Vineyard is just one of them,” Weaver said.
The August filing also alleges that two Farm Credit executives took a social trip to the Vineyard together with Uncle Nearest’s former CFO, whom Weaver has accused of fraud, noting that they attended Uncle Nearest’s inaugural Gospel Brunch event at the property and provided “unsolicited praise for the acquisition.” Referring to Farm Credit as the plaintiff, the filing states, “Plaintiff’s direct participation and documented support contradict the narrative it now offers in its Motion.”
Weaver stated at the conference that she had provided some evidence to prove her claim but that there would be more to come. “I still have not filed anything,” she added.
Uncle Nearest’s appointed receiver did file an initial report on Oct. 1, stating he had found “no evidence of misappropriation, theft, financial impropriety by the company’s founder, its management team or any current employee,” and writing that the odds were “very good” that the company would successfully emerge from receivership, The Lexington Herald Leader reported. He also detailed that although he didn’t anticipate a fire sale, some unproductive or noncore assets would likely be sold, which could include Uncle Nearest’s cognac and vodka businesses and some real estate holdings, according to The Lexington Herald-Leader.
“Every entrepreneur is going to have a moment in time where it looks like all is lost,” Weaver said. “The only difference between those who have been the most successful entrepreneurs in American history and those who have failed are those who gave up in the in between.”
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Chloe Aiello
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