Victoria Eady Butler

Roughly two years ago, Victoria Eady Butler was managing a team of Department of Justice criminal intelligence analysts at Regional Organized Crime Information Center in Nashville. This year, Whisky Magazine named her Master Blender of 2021, the most recent and sparkling distinction among an avalanche of awards she has earned for her Tennessee whiskeys in the last two years. Her great-great-grandfather was Nathan “Nearest” Green, the enslaved and later emancipated man who taught an orphan named Jack Daniel the craft of distilling but was overlooked by history ever since. Today, Butler and her brand honor him with its flagship spirits: 1820, a single-barrel whiskey named for the year Nearest was likely born (records are limited and not a single photo of him exists).