https://www.guidelive.com/food-and-drink/2018/02/07/slave-taught-jack-daniel-make-whiskey-now-can-toast-spirit-honor#_ga=2.10087795.730197137.1518034852-1624741375.1518034852

Daniel learned how to make the spirit from a slave named Nathan “Nearest” Green, who worked on a farm near where Daniel grew up in Lynchburg, Tenn., according to author Fawn Weaver, who uncovered the story. Green is the country’s first documented African-American master distiller, Weaver’s research found, and he was first at the helm when Daniel opened his distillery. Both the aged whiskey and upcoming silver version of Uncle Nearest 1856 are created using the Lincoln County Process, a charcoal mellowing filtration method that distinguishes Tennessee whiskey from other bourbons. Charcoal mellowing was Green’s specialty, according to Weaver, who traced the process back to its origins in West Africa. “Whiskey in general, we can track every bit every of it back to the Scottish or the Irish, every aspect of it, except charcoal mellowing,” Weaver says. “Why? Because we were property, not people. … It just came out of thin air, as far as what we’ve always said.” “People don’t mind rewriting history with a story that’s positive. They don’t want to rewrite history if it’s going to put people at odds,” Weaver says. “In this case, we’re not putting people at odds, we’re bringing people together.”

Commentary by Justin Igger

I always knew whiskey had to be invented by a brotha. That’s why it be tastin so smoov. Just like peanut butter. Knowmsayin.

I bet black-n-milds was invented by a nigga too. Cause they smoov den a mug also. Fo real.

And when white boys be smoking blunt sticks and sippin Jack Daniels, they just nut-ridin niggas. Cause white boys always wanna pretend they black. What’s that word they be callin white niggas? Wiggas or sumpin? Sheeit.

Wiggas be culture vultures and shit. That mean they be stealin our culture. Because rap, big booty and grape drank is as black and Jack Daniel’s whiskey. And soap. Cause black people taught white people how to take a baf. Fo real.

When white folks came to Africa they was dirty and shit. And smelt like do-do. They skin wasn’t even white. So the Qweenz took them to river and washed they bodies with yak tongues. And then dried them off with hyena hides and spit on they hair so it would smell like qweenz breaf.

Then they would all sit around the Kang’z dunghut and drink charcoal mellowed whiskey and smoke crushed turtle shell. Cause Africans might not have invented the wheel or an alphabet, but they knew how to make whiskey and take a baf in the river. Fo real.