Fawn Weaver, Uncle Nearest Founder and CEO

Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey announced the formation of the Uncle Nearest Venture Fund on June 1, a $50 million fund created specifically to invest in rapidly growing, minority-founded and -owned spirits brands. Fawn Weaver, Uncle Nearest Founder and CEO, said it is by design that the timing of the announcement comes on the 100th anniversary of the destruction of Black Wall Street, which took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where 35 blocks of businesses in the city’s Black district were destroyed by a white mob during the Tulsa Race Massacre. The fund’s first chosen investments receive initial funding of $2 million: the London-based Equiano, the world’s first Afro-Caribbean rum founded by Ian Burrell and Aaisha Dadral, and Jack From Brooklyn, Inc., the first-known Black-owned distillery in America post-Prohibition and maker of Sorel Liqueur, founded by Jackie Summers in 2012.