Tasting notes

nose

honey, vanilla and brown sugar, with milk chocolate and dried fruit behind them

palate

golden syrup and caramel with dried mango and stone fruit, a light tingle on the tongue, and a thread of smoke and oak

finish

medium length; honey and white pepper hold on with peach and raisin, then it turns toward smoke and dry oak as it fades

Mash bill

Corn, rye and malted barley, in proportions Michter's does not publish. The distillery says the recipe is built around top-grade American corn, and at its Shively distillery it buys only non-GMO, USDA grade #1 grain grown in the United States and tests every delivery in its own lab. Corn and the smaller grains run through separate cage mills there, so each is ground to its own particle size without scorching.

Why it's craft

Each batch of this bourbon is drawn from no more than twenty barrels, a cap Michter's sets so that no weak barrel can be hidden in a large vatting. The barrels are unusual for an everyday bourbon: the wood is air-dried outdoors for at least 18 months, toasted before it is charred, and filled at 103 proof instead of the 125 the rules allow, which costs Michter's bottles per barrel. The warehouses are heated and then left to cool through the winter to push the whiskey in and out of the wood more often. Michter's has distilled in Louisville's Shively neighborhood since 2015 and does not say whether this bottle holds that whiskey or older stock distilled under contract to its recipe.