{"id":513,"date":"2018-11-19T22:36:25","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T22:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2018\/11\/michters-10-year-single-barrel-bourbon.html"},"modified":"2018-11-19T22:36:25","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T22:36:25","slug":"michters-10-year-single-barrel-bourbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=513","title":{"rendered":"Michter’s 10 Year Single Barrel Bourbon"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a nighttime sipping bourbon, I've been enjoying the 2018 release of the Michter's 10 Year Single Barrel lately.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Michters10yrsingbarr\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Michter's<\/span><\/a> is an interesting brand with <\/span>a complex history<\/span><\/a>; it's an <\/span>old brand name<\/span><\/a> used by a couple different companies in succession for Pennsylvania-style whiskeys, and they distilled at <\/span>a complex in Schaefferstown, PA<\/span><\/a> until going bankrupt and abandoning the distillery on Valentine's Day 1990. The federal government carted off the thousands of gallons of whiskey that were aging on the site and destroyed it over the company's failure to satisfy tax liens and other issues. The <\/span>distillery itself deteriorated<\/span><\/a> and the <\/span>remnants were demolished<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fast-forward seven years to 1997, when a liquor-importing company in New York named Chatham Imports bought the disused Michter's trademark and started releasing bourbon and rye under the Michter's name. (Just to reiterate, "new Michter's" has no relationship at all with any "old Michter's" released before 1990, though it's in their interest to blur the lines a little for marketing reasons.) The "new Michter's" is contract-distilled by a distillery that Michter's won't name (which is a fairly common practice, and doesn't bother me unless companies lie about it, which Michter's isn't doing.) I asked Chatham Imports president <\/span>Joe Magliocco<\/span><\/a> point-blank once where their juice comes from and he refused to answer, only smiling enigmatically when I specifically brought up Heaven Hill and Brown-Forman.<\/span><\/p>\n

"New Michter's" employs<\/a> a master distiller and a master of maturation<\/a> — both women, which is unusual in the industry — and built a distillery and warehouses near Louisville, though they only started distilling two years ago and the whiskey won't be ready for a few more years. Their team does a superb job, though, at keeping tabs on their contract-distilled whiskey, carefully controlling the maturation process, and choosing exactly when to bottle and release their expressions. I'm not as big a fan of their "US*1" brand by and large, but it's certainly decent (you can find better value elsewhere), though their premium Michter's releases are very good indeed. They release bourbons and ryes at various ages, and they've released some no-age-statement toasted-barrel and "sour mash" bourbons as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which brings me to what's in my glass: This is the 2018 release of their 10 Year Old Single Barrel bourbon, which is very nice indeed. (Michter's was kind enough to send me a sample.) It's peppery and a little hot off the top (this was bottled at 94.4 proof\/47.2% abv) but has some nice vanilla-laden oakiness immediately following. This doesn't taste like it's ten years old; I wondered if this is actually twelve or fourteen years. (With most whiskeys, age statements have to denote the youngest whiskey in the bottle, so a blend of a ten-year, a twelve-year, and a sixteen-year can only legally be labeled as ten years old — but with a single barrel expression, we know that everything in a given bottle came from a single barrel with a definite age.) Does Michter's release several different single barrel whiskeys under the 10 Year brand, some older, but keep the label the same out of expediency? We'll never know. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"MichtersThe whiskey continues to unfold on the palate, bringing in dried fruit and baking spices. (One <\/span>review<\/span><\/a> I read suggested "burnt orange peel" which seems exactly right, for the caramelized-fruit note and slight bitterness.) It's fairly dry, however, and feels a little thinner than some of their other expressions. In the glass with a big crystal-clear ice sphere, it appears more viscous, though, with some legs\/beads near the bottom underneath the rock. The peppery zing returns once again for a continued dry finish. Wonder what the rye percentage is? <\/span><\/p>\n

I've seen <\/span>recommendations<\/span><\/a> to pair this bourbon with a cigar, which I'm sure would be great if I smoked them or knew anything about them. It's certainly a nice whiskey to sip slowly as it unfolds with the ice. It may be sacrilege to some given that this is a single barrel release and not terribly cheap, but it also makes a decent Manhattan, particularly with a richer vermouth such as <\/span>Carpano Antica Formula<\/span><\/a>, which is a <\/span>vanilla bomb<\/span><\/a> itself. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to Michter's for the bottle sample.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a nighttime sipping bourbon, I've been enjoying the 2018 release of the Michter's 10 Year Single Barrel lately. Michter's is an interesting brand with a complex history; it's an old brand name used by a couple different companies in succession for Pennsylvania-style whiskeys, and they distilled at a complex in Schaefferstown, PA until going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingredients"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}