Sana Dais - From Lynchburg to Legacy: How Uncle Nearest Distillery Honors the First Black Master Distiller

 Love Story Evidence 

Complication or Tension

Brand vs History 

Blog Post Reflection—Guiding Questions

Historical Consciousness
What can being in this place—the Uncle Nearest Distillery in Tennessee—teach you about history and legacy that reading alone could not? How does traveling from Atlanta to Tennessee shape the way you think about the past and its ties to the present?

Ethical Discernment
What does it mean to succeed through something that delights even as it wounds? When does entrepreneurship cross into responsibility for what you sell?

Curated Inwardness
What is the value of stepping outside the classroom and into a setting like this? How might this retreat invite you to see yourself differently—as an honors student, as part of a community, or as part of a larger story?

While reading Love and Whiskey over summer break, I always imagined in my head what I thought the journey throughout looked like. So, when I got word that we would be seeing this exact history in person, I was extremely excited to witness the vision first hand. Being at the distillery allowed me to experience history in a tangible way. A lot of times when we are educated on history, we do not visit exactly what we were told, and sometimes this can lead to history feeling distant or further away than what it actually is. Standing on the same land where Nearest Green was known for his distillation skills truly grounds you. It teaches you that legacy is not only on the book pages that we read, but also in the reality that we live. It’s empowering to see how stories that were one die silenced are now reclaimed and honored.

Traveling to Tennessee reinforces how physical movement mirrors the journey of African American history in the South. To succeed though something that is delightful and wounding speaks to the art of whiskey distilling. Entrepreneurship is not just about profit, but instead owning the responsibility of what you may create and how it may harm others while in their benefits. Uncle Nearest’s story suggests that there is a fine line between entrepreneurship and responsibility, and the line is crossed when what you sell is divorced from the care of the people that it touches. 

Stepping out of the classroom into a place like Uncle Nearest Distillery expands learning beyond the books that we read. It turns knowledge into culture in a lived space, and challenges us to place ourselves in the shoes of the past. The retreat really inspired me to look deeper into history and stories that may have been miscommunicationed or never told. This retreat also inspired me to think about my role in society and on a larger historical scale. In the classroom, I often think of myself through the lens of my grades, responsibilities, or even titles I may hold. However, after this retreat, I have been prompted to think to myself about what my story may look like generations from now. What is the legacy that I want to leave behind? 

Seeing the way that Nearest Green’s contributions were hidden for so long but are now being recognized the way they are left me with a takeaway. Identity is not just about the things that you achieve, but instead how your work impacts other people and how it is remembered in society. On the bus drive back, I reflected on my own path, and the journey that it will take to get there. Am I building a legacy that will uplift others the way that Nearest Green did on a smaller scale? Am I using the sacrifices of others before me to seize every opportunity presented ahead of me? This entire retreat shifted my perspective on my sense of self from defining who I am solely off of personal accomplishment to instead being grounded in responsibility and community.