314. Michters Small Batch US1 Bourbon Review

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

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Hello everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And today Mike is not with us. We're doing another craft distillery Monday show, but we do have a special guest today at one of our, uh, very good friends sitting in with us, Adam Boothby. He's going to take the co-pilot seat tonight and take us through this review. Adam, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it.

So Adam, what do we got on the show tonight?

Tonight we're drinking, uh, Michter's us one small batch bourbon 91.4 proof.

Is that correct, Jim? 91.4 proof. That's absolutely correct. And this is a great little whiskey. It runs around $40. You can find it practically anywhere, but sometimes it's out of stock.

I totally agree. And you know, you got to appreciate that price point and the fact that It's, it's not when you have to hunt down, you got to love a bourbon that's on the shelves regularly.

So at 91.4 proof, this is a rye bourbon. No, Mike, they don't have any weeded whiskeys. I mean, he actually asked Andrea that when we were there, actually, I think he asked Dan and Andrea on separate occasions.

I have no doubt that he did that man. And if we did bourbons are going to be there when you guys do your distillery visits.

I think we were, I think we were walking through the facility and we were walking past the big grain bins and he said, which one of these has the weed in it? They looked at him and said, none of them, Mike.

Yeah. And, uh, and which episode was it, Jim? I think it was episode two 53, uh, the makers distillery that you and Mike had a chance to, to, uh, meet with Dan and Andrew.

Yeah, I think it was two 53. That's a great episode listeners. Uh, if you get a chance, go back and tune in for that one. I think you'll really enjoy that visit. And we've been there on a number of occasions. We've been to their Shively distillery a number of times. They also had the Fort Nelson distillery in downtown Louisville, which is a smaller. Kind of more for the public, right?

Oh, it really is. And, and I imagine that both you and Mike have had the opportunity to go to the bar upstairs there. It's absolutely beautiful.

It's a great place to go. And, and it's a great place to pour your own bottle, right?

Yes, it really is. You know, Sarah and I, every time we've gotten back to Louisville, it is on our places of must stop and, uh, and visit.

Well, before we get into the details of this whiskey, why don't we go ahead and taste it and talk about the nose and the flavor a little bit. What do you say?

That sounds great, Jim. All right. Cheers. Cheers. You know, this one, uh, Jim, I don't know about you, but it comes off very light. Um, a little bit of lead, a little bit of ethanol. in there, kind of a vanilla, almost extract ethanol. But I think one of the things that really, that really sticks out for me is it's almost bread-like like a raisin bread or a rye bread.

I agree completely. Yeah, absolutely. Raisin bread is probably what I would consider a fairly prominent note. Yeah. It's really kind of darker in the bottle than you would expect a 91 proof bourbon to be. It's got nice color to it. So you kind of expected not to be so light, but you do get that, that kind of maybe a little bit of a toasted raisin. Very nice.

Not a lot of spice. It's really got a kind of a light copper, but it does get dark towards that. You, when you're looking at it, the angle on the bottom of the glass, let's taste it.

Cheers. Cheers.

I think it's there on the palette too.

Yeah. You know, for something that is filtered and this is a filtered whiskey, it's got a great viscosity on the palette.

Does there, there's a little peach kind of sneaking in there. You know, if this was, uh, if this, if I was talking about this to Sarah, She would probably call this, and I'm trying to think of a name that she had given me a ways back. I think it was Harvest Bread. And it's not something that I've tried, but she's talked about Harvest Bread that has that kind of a little bit of fruit, but it has that rye kind of type bread to it too.

Yeah. Yeah. This really has kind of a real bready. It had a kind of a bready nose to it. It's got a bready palette to it. I'm still getting the raisins, but I'm getting kind of a little bit more honey sweetness out of it on the palette than I didn't pick that up on the nose.

Yeah, no, I totally, totally agree with that. And then it has a almost a peppery finish, but it's not it's not a black pepper. But that's really what I found in the finish is a little bit of that peach mixed into that bread and a little bit of that maybe a white pepper on the finish.

And you don't pick up a lot of spice on the nose and you don't get much immediately when you take your first sip. But, uh, but the spice does build a little bit on the back and it, yeah, I would definitely say, uh, it's kind of, uh, it's a little bit of a honey pepper kind of, yeah.

Yeah. Now, Jim, you, uh, I think you were once, once upon a time, a cigar smoker, correct?

Yeah.

It's been a while, but. I would completely pair this up with a, uh, a very light kind of vanilla ish, um, creamy cigar, if I could, is that finish that really does it for me.

I wish I was in a position to be able to recommend a cigar for this. So you're recommending sort of a profile of a cigar. Do you have a particular cigar you'd like to recommend to our listeners?

Um, you know, I think if I, if with this, with the finish where it's that kind of white pepper. I think one of my favorite is a Connecticut. Um, it was Southern draw Rose of Sharon. And something about that cigar was just, it was so creamy and so smooth and it wouldn't fight this kind of finish where the finish isn't super strong. You know, it's not super long, but there's that little peppery kind of bit on the back of it. It wouldn't fight that. That would be my absolute go-to for this for sure.

Now, one of the things that Michter's kind of believes in is in the craft of their whiskey. I, I, we've met with these guys several times and we've seen them at events. We've had a number of opportunities to talk with Dan and Andrea and they had this cost be damned approach, you know, where they, they do things that aren't necessarily making good friends with the accountant, you know? And one of those is low barrel entry proof. They've got one of the lowest barrel entry proofs in the market at 103 proof, which is phenomenal, right? Right. A couple of things about low barrel entry proof. One is there's more water in the whiskey. Therefore it takes more barrels, right? So more barrels means more money. When you take your whiskey off the still and you put it in the barrel, that whiskey has a value of a few hundred dollars, right? That barrel has probably twice that $400 cost. They're very expensive. So the biggest expense when you're, when you're barreling whiskey is the barrel itself, not the whiskey. And then when you put it in a diluted form and add it to the barrel, my goodness, cost be damned. Right.

Yeah, that is cost. Absolutely. Uh, you know, and you got to think about this as they age some of those older whiskies and they, they do have, uh, quite a selection of older whiskies. What I think we were talking before the show, 10, 10 years, 20 years, 25 years in some cases.

Absolutely. Yeah, they do. They have some, uh, they have quite a, quite a lineup of whiskies. One of the things about low barrel entry proof is water is much better at extracting the goodness of a barrel than alcohol is. So.

It's really extracting those sugars, right, Jim?

Absolutely. That's part of it. There's some other things in there that are chemical terms that we won't go into. And honestly, I don't know. But it does do a much better job of pulling the flavors out of the barrel. Not only that, think about it this way. You know, that water is interacting with the barrel, right? So the water is getting the benefit of that flavoring that proofing water doesn't get if it's added in after the fact. So I'm a big fan of these guys. I think that they, uh, they definitely make a great whiskey. Now they're us one small batch here as you taste it, Adam, this is not something that's going to blow you away. It's just a good solid bourbon.

I really think it is, Jim, a great solid bourbon. And listeners, just to kind of recap for you, so we're drinking Michter's Small Batch US-1 Bourbon. It's 91.4 proof. And Jim, this is not age stated. So nowhere until you get some of Michter's older bourbons, are we seeing an age statement there. Um, so of course it'll leave you a little bit wondering. And I don't think another thing that, that really is that makers gets out and talks about much as their mash bill either. But obviously this is, it's a raw bourbon just from the taste of it. Definitely some curiosity there.

Yeah. Well, they, I mean, believe me, we've, we've put the questions to them before about ages and they're not going to tell you and they're not going to talk about their mash bill. But so what they will say is that they age to a profile. So when the bourbon reaches that profile, Uh, that's when it's ready, not when it hits a certain number. Now they do heat cycle their warehouses though, which is something that helps with that aging process. So, you know, uh, let's just say a six year old mickters heat cycled warehouse bourbon is going to be equivalent to maybe an eight year old naturally aged Rick house, you know, whatever you want to call it.

Not, not quite outdoor in Texas heat style, but exactly, exactly. You know, one thing I think I noticed too, is that they talk a bit of on their website, because if you look up on the, uh, kind of around the neck of these bottles, each one of them has a batch number. And I thought it was interesting to note because you always hear the term small batch, right, Jim? Right. So, but small batch really doesn't have a definition around it. So you, you know, you look at small batch and you think, what is that five barrels? Is it a 20 barrels? Is it a hundred? Is it thousands of barrels? It really no definition about it. But one thing they were clear about is, is indicating that These are normally 20 barrels. So that to me, that is still a small batch. I think kind of fitting to maybe craft distillery type whiskey review Monday.

Absolutely. And that's, that's why it's, I think it's such a good candidate for a craft distillery show because Michter's is sort of a kind of a medium sized whiskey company, right? They're not one of the super big boys, but they're not a small craft distillery either, but they are totally embracing the craft and totally taking that cost be damned approach. They even have their own farm in Springfield, Kentucky, where they grow their own grain. So they want that kind of control over it. It's pretty cool stuff.

It really is impressive. Uh, just the fact that there's so much history, you know, dating back to what is it? 1753, something like that. And then all of that history, you know, still coming up to date and producing a really great bourbon.

Now in 1753, their predecessors were a ride distillery in Pennsylvania in 1753 called shanks, right? Shanks.

And then I think, uh, moving that it changed hands and it was renamed to bomb burgers.

I think that happened in the 18 hundreds at some point and then up until prohibition when everybody had to quit doing the business. I feel like when it came back out of prohibition and it went through a number of hands, people tried to resurrect it, but, uh, it just didn't quite take somewhere along the way. Um, one of the owners had two sons. One was named Michael and the other one, Peter, he just took their two names and sort of merged them together and came up with mixers, Michael and Peter. But in the 1990s, Joe Magliocco, along with Richard Newman kind of teamed up to bring back the makers brand. So what we have today is sort of the result of that effort. And you gotta, you gotta think about it this way. You know, back in the nineties, whiskey was not at the top. Of anybody's list of things they were buying. It was kind of still struggling.

I think in the, in the nineties, really what it was is this battle between bourbon and, uh, and clear spirits, you know, with all the, the introduction of vodka and flavored vodka and other things like that.

Wow. What a great bourbon, um, definitely medium to. Sort of mid shelf, a little bit higher, good solid bourbon $40. Uh, I would say that everybody should probably have one of these on their bar. I was just telling you before, before we hopped on here, I had a friend who's just recently gotten into that's kind of the whiskey drinking scene. He's starting to collect a few bottles. He wanted to know. What he should pick up. And I told him, Hey, get one of these pictures us one Bourbons, you know, they're small batch and he did, and he reported back. It's now it's his, his new favorite bourbon.

So that's, this could, this could easily be a favorite for somebody. I think especially as a newcomer, it's, it's inviting. It's easy to sip. You know, we get so caught up too, too often in the higher proofs. Um, this is just, it carries its flavor as well. It's at a lower proof. It's easy to sit. This would definitely be a recommendation for somebody coming into bourbon.

Absolutely. Well, Adam, another great show and great job jumping in and, and, and pitch hitting for Mike. He had some other things he had to do today and couldn't join us, but it was nice of you to jump in and, and do a co-host with me. I appreciate it. I might have to reach out to you again someday.

Oh, Jim, I appreciate having me on. Obviously I don't have, I don't have Mike's deep booming voice and I'm definitely not the big bad booby booty daddy of bourbon. I can't even say it out loud without laughing.

I think we might have to skip that part of the outro today. I don't know.

Yeah, that's definitely going to get skipped.

All right.

Well, Adam, before I go into the outro, why don't you tell everybody where they can find you on? Well, all the social medias now, absolutely.

A D Boothby on Instagram and Adam Boothby on Facebook. And you are in the bourbon roadies. I am in the bourbon roadies. And, you know, I think some of the best way to, to both find myself and, uh, and to get ahold of Jim or Mike, or of course is to join our private Facebook page, the bourbon roadies. Uh, we'll ask you three questions. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? And, uh, are you willing to play nice with others? Uh, because definitely one of the things we don't allow in that, in that, in the Facebook page, Jim is what?

We don't allow any rudeness whatsoever. You got to be nice to your fellow bourbon drinkers. If you're not. Well, you need to find somewhere else to be. Exactly. All right. Well, we do two of these shows every single week. Every Monday, we do a craft distillery episode like today, where we'll grab a single expression like this. Mickers small batch us one bourbon whiskey. We'll try it. We'll taste it. We'll tell you what we think about it. We'll let you know whether or not we think you ought to add it to your bar. I think in this case, Adam, I think we're in unison on this. This is a good addition to any bar, right?

This is a great addition to a bar. It doesn't matter what's in your collection right now. It's worth one having.

Absolutely. Every single Wednesday, we'll do a full length episode. We'll spend about an hour. We'll do a half an hour in and a half an hour out. We'll deep dive into a subject. We'll have a guest on. We'll drink through several expressions, give you a little bit longer show than we do on Mondays. Two shows every single week. You don't want to miss them. And in order not to miss those shows, What you need to do is scroll on up to the top of that app. You're listening to us on hit that subscribe button. Make sure that every time a show comes out from the bourbon road, you get a little ding notification on your phone. Let's you know, you won't miss one. That'll happen twice a week. I guarantee it. Also, we'd love to hear from you. If you've got some ideas for a show, if you've got an idea for a bottle, we ought to review. If you've got somebody you think would make a good guest on the show, we'd like to know about it. You can always reach out to us. How about our website, the bourbon road.com. We've got to contact us page on there. Mike and I are pretty approachable. You can also send us emails. I'm Jim at the bourbon road.com. He's Mike at the bourbon road.com. But like we always say, probably the best way just hit up our DMS on Instagram. I'm Jay Shannon 63. He's big bourbon chief and we'll see you down the bourbon road.