Michter’s has been bottling its 10-year-old bourbon for a quarter-century, since the early days of its rebirth in Kentucky. (Originally based in Pennsylvania, the brand was defunct for several years in the 1990s.) 

However, the age statement — referring to the age of the youngest whiskey in the blend — has always taken a back seat to flavor. This means that each batch they bottle can be significantly older than 10 years. “As much as you try to have the whiskey in every barrel age exactly the same, it doesn’t in reality,” says Michter’s president Joe Magliocco. “Our master distiller Dan McKee and our master of maturation Andrea Wilson can wait for a whiskey to be ready, be it 11, 12, or 15 years old, rather than be under pressure to bottle it when it’s 10 years and a day old.” 

So, how old is the bourbon in the latest batch of Michter’s 10-Year Bourbon? The Michter’s team isn’t saying, though Andrea Wilson, who has been with the distillery since 2014, confirms that “once again, it’s overaged.” 

Regardless of the exact age, the flavor profile echoes that of previous releases. “We want Michter’s 10 to take you on a journey,” Wilson says. “We want there to be beautiful color and enticing aromas that draw you into your first sip, a complex harmony of flavors from fruit and spice through to confectionary notes, exquisite maturity without being too oak-forward, a creamy rich texture, and a nice long finish to leave you with an unforgettable experience.” 

That flavor profile has been the goal ever since the late 1990s, when Magliocco was driving around Kentucky looking to source aged bourbon — a much easier task back then, when the American whiskey industry was in the thick of a decades-long slump. 

“In those days, there was little to no market for age statement bourbons,” the 67-year-old alum of Yale and, later, Harvard Law School, remembers. “Kentucky was awash with excess whiskey that distilleries were anxious to get rid of. We tasted through wonderful whiskeys of different styles and picked our absolute favorite bourbon to be the one first released as Michter’s 10-Year Bourbon.” 

A few years later, with Brown-Forman alum Willie Pratt at the helm, Michter’s began distilling its own whiskey at various Kentucky distilleries. “Phase 2,” as Magliocco calls it. And in 2015, Phase 3 culminated with the opening of Michter’s very own distillery in Shively, Kentucky. 

Throughout this journey, Michter’s has sought to replicate the flavor profile of the original 10-Year Bourbon. Some years have been trickier than others. Take 2022, for example, when Magliocco had signed off on the release of a batch that had already been aging for a little more than 13 years. However, he recalls, “Dan McKee and Andrea Wilson decided to hold it one more year until it reached 14-and-a-half years old to bottle it as Michter’s 10-Year Bourbon. They felt that one extra year would take that particular whiskey from wonderful to truly memorable. 

So consumers wound up waiting until another year for the 10-Year release.

Michter’s 10-Year Bourbon occupies a crucial middle ground within the Michter’s portfolio, in between the no-age-statement US*1 bourbon and the rarer 20- and 25-year-old expressions, which regularly sell for four figures n the secondary market. At $195, it fits the price range of a sipping bourbon, though Wilson also recommends it for cocktails, particularly, “in a beautiful classic like the Manhattan.”

As the first Shively-produced bourbon reaches a decade of aging, and thus becomes eligible for inclusion in Michter’s 10-year-old bottlings, a new chapter in the brand’s history is set to begin. But Wilson will be the first to tell you that she doesn’t know precisely when that will be. 

“We are not aging to reach a number,” she says, “we are aging to reach an exceptional drinking experience.”