In the realm of offerings that Kentucky distillery Michter’s brings to the table, the most rare of its bottlings is the Celebration Sour Mash expression. It has only been released a handful of times by them, representing some of the rarest barrels from their stocks and also pegged as the most expensive whiskey they make available for sale.
The new Michter’s 2019 Celebration Sour Mash Whiskey, according to those behind it, is being released again for the first time after three years. It is a blended release, being taken from just six carefully selected barrels from Michter’s Master Distiller Dan McKee and Master of Maturation Andrea Wilson.
As McKee explains it in a prepared statement, “Working on my first Celebration release was a labor of love for me. Ultimately, I chose to take whiskey from two Kentucky straight bourbon barrels and four Kentucky straight rye barrels in our stocks. Each Celebration release is special and unique, and this year’s release differs from the 2016 one, where the whiskey came from three bourbon barrels and three rye barrels.”
“It’s not just a question of finding this great barrel and putting it with that great barrel,” added Wilson. “It’s a matter of selecting fantastic barrels that go together so well that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts. The whiskeys in the 2019 release range in age from over a decade to over 30 years old.”
It is said that when Celebration was first released in 2013, it was the first time “an American whiskey company was offering a rare blend for a suggested retail price of several thousand dollars.” The 2019 variant is up in that super high premium setting as well, being bottled at 115.6 proof and costing around $5,000 for one of the just 277 bottles being made available.
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