How Jack Daniel Came to Make Whiskey
How Jack Daniel Came to Make Whiskey
There is an interesting picture that hangs in Jack Daniel’s office. It’s a picture of Jack taken with his Distillery crew. What makes the portrait so intriguing is the gentleman sitting immediately to Jack’s right. Given the time period when this photograph was taken – around the 1900s – and the racial divide that permeated the American South, it is not often that you’d see a Black man man seated beside the proprietor of a business. But behind this photo is the story of a remarkable relationship that is at the heart of how Jack came to make whiskey.
We have reason to believe the man in the photo next to Jack is George Green. Along with being Jack’s friend, George was also the son of Jack’s first Master Distiller Nathan “Nearest” Green. It was Nathan Green who taught Jack Daniel about making whiskey and introduced him to the Lincoln County Process, the charcoal mellowing process we still use today that makes our whiskey so unique.
Jack left home at a young age and came to live and work on Reverend Dan Call’s farm by the late 1850s where he worked as a chore boy. On his farm, Dan Call had a still which Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green, an enslaved man and master at distilling whiskey, ran for him. As a chore boy (the 19th century equivalent of a “Jack of all trades”) Jack was tasked with helping Nathan Green, and it was through this relationship that Jack learned about whiskey making, the Lincoln County Process of charcoal mellowing, and developed life-long friendships with the Green family.*
Eventually when Reverend Call’s congregation and wife gave the preacher an ultimatum: walk away from making whiskey or walk away from his work as a minister, he made the decision to sell his business to Jack. And so Jack hired his friend and mentor, Nathan Green, who was now free as his first head distiller – or what we’d call a master distiller today. Nathan worked with Jack as his first master distiller until Jack moved his operation to the Cave Spring Hollow sometime after 1881. There, Nathan’s sons, George and Eli, and later his grandsons, Ott, Jesse and Charlie continued the Green family tradition, working at Jack’s distillery in the Cave Spring Hollow.
More than 150 years have passed since Nathan Green and Jack Daniel first began making whiskey together, and, to this day, there has always been a member of the Green family working at the Jack Daniel Distillery. If you find the time to come visit us in Lynchburg, you can see the portrait of Jack and Nathan’s son, George Green, that hangs in Jack’s old office and listen to a little more of this unique story of two men, their friendship and the whiskey they made together.
*Slave labor was a part of life in the American South when Jack Daniel was a boy and young man, but Jack didn't own slaves. He worked side-by-side with enslaved people when he was a hired hand to Dan Call. When it came time after the Civil War to establish his own distillery, Jack’s crew were all hired men.
Become A Friend Of Jack
Since 1866 Jack Daniel’s has been making friends all over the world. We would like to invite you to become a friend of Jack too.
