Jack Daniel’s sold a preacher story and buried the enslaved distiller

The whiskey was filtered through charcoal. The history was filtered through whiteness.

For 150 years, Jack Daniel’s sold the tidy story of a white country preacher teaching a boy to make whiskey. The man actually running the still was Nearest Green, an enslaved master distiller whose work gave Tennessee whiskey its signature trick.

Brand legend said young Jack learned whiskey-making from Dan Call, a white country preacher and distiller. But the man actually running Call’s still in the 1850s was Nathan “Nearest” Green, an enslaved distiller whose skill shaped the whiskey that made Jack Daniel famous.

Green specialized in sugar maple charcoal filtering, the process now associated with Tennessee whiskey and known as the Lincoln County Process. It mellows new whiskey through charcoal before aging, and it is one of the defining differences between Tennessee whiskey and bourbon. The Nearest Green Foundation says many whiskey and food historians believe the technique has roots in West African charcoal-filtration practices.

Jack Daniel’s has since acknowledged Green’s role, but only after more than a century of the preacher story doing the work. History.com notes that Green “went unacknowledged for more than 150 years,” while Jack Daniel’s later began telling the fuller story around its 150th anniversary.

The whiskey was filtered through charcoal. The history was filtered through whiteness.