Michter's

After purchasing the rights to the abandoned Michter’s trademark in 1996, Joe Magliocco, a lawyer and owner of Chatham Imports Company became a man with a plan! The plan was a fairly straightforward plan. Part one was to source the best whiskey that he could to bottle under the Michter’s brand name. Part two was to find a contract distiller that would produce whiskey to his specifications and part three was to build a distillery in order to produce his own whiskey.

Whether or not this plan was hatched in a bar, pub, sauna or around a campfire is unknown, but aided by friends Dick Newman and Steve Ziegler he began what would be a long journey. By 1999, after numerous sampling sessions they had settled on purchasing a number of barrels of rye whiskey from United Distillers (later to become Diageo). Next, they needed someone to bottle the juice, so they formed a relationship with Julian Van Winkle III, who ran a bottling plant in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

Between 2000 and 2002, Julian bottled these casks, and they were labelled as 10 year old Rye and Bourbon. It is believed that these casks were actually a lot older than 10 years of age and have now become highly sort after by American whiskey aficionados. By late 2002 Julian had secured a deal with Buffalo Trace to partner with his bourbon brand and therefore he would be unable to continue bottling Michter’s whisky. However, he knew a man that could, and he put Joe in touch with a guy called Even Kulsveen, who with his wife owned Kentucky Bourbon Distiller’s Limited (KBD – originally known as the Willett Distilling Company).

Although Kulsveen owned a distillery it was inactive at this time and the company was also purchasing barrels of whiskey and bulk whiskey from distilleries that had excess stocks. They were also acting as an independent bottler as well as bottling third party casks, thus they agreed to take on the bottling of Michter’s. With Kulsveen’s assistance, Magliocco and the team decided to expand the Michter’s range and in early 2003 Michter’s Unblended American Whiskey was launched. It is assumed that this bottling was created from a bulk purchase by KBD from Brown Forman’s Early Times distillery. It was also believed that it was a blend of 80% Bourbon and 20% Whiskey which had been aged in used barrels. At the same time, they also released the Michter’s Single Barrel Rye Whiskey, which was also believed to have been a KBD bulk purchase.

By 2004 Magliocco had moved on to part two of his plan and had signed an agreement with an ‘undisclosed’ distillery, which it is alleged to be Brown Forman’s Early Times to supply him with spirit distilled to his specifications. This spirit was then put into expensive casks due to Magliocco specifying that the wood for these casks should be seasoned for between 18 and 36 months, whereas the industry standard was to use 3 to 6 month seasoned oak. Finally, these barrels would be aged in Brown Forman’s heat-cycled warehouse until they were ready to be bottled.