Joe Magliocco

Joseph Magliocco’s earliest link to Michter’s came in the late 1970s, when he took his very first sales job at his family’s wine and spirits business. His first task in the job was offloading the poorly selling Michter’s, then a Pennsylvania brand, mini gold-plated King Tut decanters. As he worked to clear out the Michter’s decanters, he developed an affinity for the brand.

Fast forward to 1995, when Magliocco was at the helm of a new family business, Chatham Imports, and was looking for a brand to jumpstart the budding company’s revenue stream. Magliocco, a whiskey lover himself, saw an opportunity. “I wanted to do an American rye, and that was virtually dead, and when I say dead, I mean really, really dead, but I knew from tasting older ryes years earlier that the whiskey could be exceptional, and it just wasn’t out there.”

Magliocco learned the Michter’s Trademark was for sale, so he bought it in 1997 for a whopping $245. Magliocco refers to this era of the new Michter’s as “phase one,” wherein he relied solely on sourced whiskey, namely Kentucky rye and bourbon over 10 years old. In that first year of business, right before 2000, he sold just 150 bottles.

2003 started his foray into hiring contract distillers for “phase 2”, then he bought the Ft. Nelson Building in Louisville in 2012 for “phase 3”. According to Magliocco, they stopped sourcing after 2015, so all of their younger stuff is entirely theirs with their ten year soon to be 100% Michter’s in 2024.