Weaver referred to “Inc. 5000 conference” on October 24.
Uncle Nearest is founder and CEO Fawn Weaver denouncing what he calls a “vicious campaign” in his company’s ongoing acquisition case.
Weaver addressed the ongoing receivership battle during a talk titled “Reviving Your Company in Troubled Times.”Inc. 5000 Conference on Oct. 24, discussing the company’s reported default on $108 million in loans to Kentucky lender Farm Credit.
“Martha’s Vineyard was a smear campaign tactic,” Weaver said captured by Inc. “Their hope was that the judge would see it, accept the flaw and hand them the keys to my company.”
Earlier this month, receiver Phillip Young asked a judge to rule whether additional assets related to the Uncle Nearest distillery, including a whiskey, restaurant and entertainment venue in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and the Martha’s Vineyard property purchased by the Weavers in 2023, are included.
On Oct. 21, Weaver, who founded the company with her husband, Keith, has been submitted Response to Opposition to Receiver’s Request to Place 10 Additional Businesses Under Court Control. The receiver sought “clarification” on whether to include those entities, citing an apparent mix-up of finances with the distillery being acquired in September.
In their filing, the Weavers argued that the entities are separate from the distillery and are not liable for its debts, warning that placing them under receivership would deprive them and others of their financial interests. The petition also claims that Uncle Nearest is not insolvent and has enough assets to pay off outstanding loans without involving other businesses.
“If you can get a judge to believe that we embezzled the funds to buy a property, 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 city that doesn’t have sunshine nine months of the year,” Weaver said at the conference.
Weaver’s latest filing follows an August petition that claims that Application for Farm Credit “ignores critical context” and that the lender failed to take adequate legal steps to secure its claim to the property as collateral in the event of a loan default, a point Weaver reiterated at the conference.
“They had no security for our bail. And the question arises: why not? Why didn’t you ask to upgrade seven of our eight properties? Martha’s Vineyard is one of them,” Weaver said.
Nearest Green Distillery and Uncle Nearest Whiskey were placed into receivership last month. The brand, cited as the second best-selling Tennessee whiskey in the US after Jack Daniel’s, has won numerous awards and maintained sales growth despite a post-pandemic drop in alcohol consumption.
But the distillery is among several financial challenges as Americans drink less and exports decline amid trade tensions over President Donald Trump’s tariff war. Despite the receipt, Weaver remains loyal to the company he founded, seeing the struggle as part of the risks inherent in entrepreneurship.
“Every entrepreneur will have a moment in time when everything seems lost,” Weaver said. “The only difference between the people who have been the most successful entrepreneurs in American history and the ones who have failed is the ones who went down.”
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