A Pennsylvania distillery, a coined name and a bankruptcy.

The name Michter’s comes from a distillery in Schaefferstown, in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. English Wikipedia’s article on the site, citing its National Register nomination and the papers of the Hagley Museum and Library, says the Swiss Mennonite farmers John and Michael Shenk began distilling rye whiskey there in 1753; the modern company says the business was founded by John Shenk that year. Around 1860, Wikipedia says, Abraham Bomberger bought the distillery, which became known for decades as Bomberger’s. It closed with Prohibition in 1919 and changed hands several times after repeal.

The name itself is twentieth-century. Louis “Lou” Forman, who acquired the distillery in the 1940s, distilled the first batch of Michter’s in 1951, according to the Hagley finding aid cited by Wikipedia, and the company says he made the name by combining parts of his sons’ names, Michael and Peter. Forman’s group formed Michter’s Distillery, Inc. around 1978. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark in January 1980.

The Pennsylvania business did not survive the long slump in American whiskey. The distillery closed in 1989 after a bankruptcy filing; Wikipedia, citing the landmark nomination, describes it as America’s smallest commercial distiller at the time of its closure. The company says its then owners abandoned the premises and the Michter’s name with them. The Schaefferstown buildings were later sold separately, and other firms have since revived the Bomberger’s name there — a separate business from Michter’s.

The company’s account of the early years also includes a story that George Washington bought Shenk’s whiskey for his troops at Valley Forge; Michter’s presents this itself as Pennsylvania historical lore.

A trademark refiled, and a move to Kentucky.

The revival came from two men in the trade. In the 1990s, according to the company and to English Wikipedia’s article on him, Joseph J. Magliocco, a Yale and Harvard Law School graduate who had entered the wine and spirits business, teamed up with Richard “Dick” Newman, whom the company describes as his consultant and mentor. The company says Newman had run Old Grand-Dad, Old Crow and Old Taylor for National Distillers and had been president and chief executive of Austin Nichols, the distiller of Wild Turkey.

The company says the two filed for the unused and abandoned Michter’s trademark and made their first strategic decision: to rebuild the brand not in Pennsylvania but in Kentucky, closer to the American whiskey industry’s talent and resources. English Wikipedia, citing the archived site of Chatham Imports, Inc., says whiskeys made in Kentucky have been sold under the Michter’s label, owned by Chatham, since 2004, including bourbon, rye and a version of the old Original Sour Mash.

The modern range is built around a few names: the US*1 line of bourbon, rye, sour mash and an unblended American whiskey. The company also credits its production leaders by name. It says Pam Heilmann, now Master Distiller Emerita, became the first woman since Prohibition to serve as master distiller at a Kentucky Distillers’ Association distillery; that Andrea Wilson, its master of maturation and chief operating officer, was the first woman to chair that association; and that Dan McKee is now master distiller.

Its website quotes reviews and lists honours, including Drinks International’s “Most Admired American Whiskey,” which the company presents on its own pages.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all bourbon names: Elijah Craig, Eagle Rare, Blanton’s, Angel’s Envy, Old Forester, Michter’s and Basil Hayden. Bourbon brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family distillers that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a hotel bar.

A bourbon brand’s identity is usually carried less by the whiskey itself than by a bottle, a label and a name, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its distilling or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its whiskey is actually distilled, aged and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its whiskey is made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Three Kentucky sites for a Pennsylvania name.

Michter’s now makes its whiskey in Louisville. English Wikipedia’s article on Shively, Kentucky, says the brand opened a new distillery there in 2015. The company describes the Shively plant as a 14.3-acre site that handles all of its processing and bottling and houses a copper column still with a copper pot-still doubler, built, it says, by Vendome Copper & Brass Works. It says all Michter’s whiskey is aged in Kentucky, in heat-cycled warehouses.

Its second site is downtown. Michter’s restored the Fort Nelson Building on West Main Street, an 1890s cast-iron building across from the Louisville Slugger Museum, and opened it as a distillery and visitor centre in 2019, according to items on its website at the time. The company says the Fort Nelson stills and cypress-wood fermenters came from the original Pennsylvania operation, a physical link between the old name and the new business. The site is a stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, on the same street as Old Forester’s distillery.

The third is a farm. The company says it acquired 205 acres at Springfield, Kentucky, in 2017 and brought in its first corn harvest in October 2018, working with local farmers to grow corn, rye and barley for both distilleries.

The brand’s Pennsylvania heritage is a matter of name rather than continuous operation: the old distillery closed in 1989, and the Kentucky business has used the Michter’s mark since the trademark was refiled in the 1990s.

For a design guide, Michter’s shows how a revived name can borrow an older story while building a new house around it. Compare Wild Turkey, the bourbon Dick Newman once oversaw at Austin Nichols, and Old Forester, its neighbour on Main Street. For this guide we use claret, gold and parchment with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Michter’s’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.