Michter's most extraordinarily aged releases sit at the very top of the American whiskey hierarchy, and any deeply matured sour mash bottling carrying decades on its label is a rare animal indeed. Sour mash — the practice of using a portion of spent mash from a previous fermentation to start the next, originally codified by Dr James C. Crow at Old Crow in the 1830s — is the defining technique of Kentucky whiskey-making, and Michter's has built much of its modern reputation on coaxing extreme age out of its sour mash stocks without letting them collapse into oak.
On the nose, decades in wood announce themselves immediately: rich seasoned oak, dark caramel, dried fig, polished leather, and the unmistakable scent of an old library. Beneath that wood, there is still real fruit — stewed plum, raisin, a flicker of orange marmalade — and a deep, almost balsamic undercurrent that only the oldest American whiskies seem to develop.
The palate is concentrated and contemplative. Toffee and dark chocolate arrive first, followed by tobacco leaf, walnut, espresso and stewed dark fruit. The texture is dense and oily, the wood influence enormous but never bitter, and the sour mash backbone provides a faint tangy lift that keeps the whole thing from feeling tired. This is whisky that demands silence and time.
The finish is extraordinarily long, drying and resonant, with leather, oak tannin, dark sugar and a faint herbal echo lingering for several minutes after the swallow. Releases of this stature are aimed squarely at collectors and at the most serious of sippers, and their prices reflect that — but as a benchmark for what extreme age can do to American sour mash whiskey, Michter's most aged bottlings remain in a league of their very own.
