IT WAS 1990, Valentine’s Day, the end of Michter’s. Like a stab to the heart the way this special day went, Dick Stoll, the master distiller at the time, received the news by phone. A bank was taking over the entire property and everyone was to turn the lights off, lock the doors, go home and never return.
Michter’s saw it coming. The American whisky industry was suffering; a 13-year Prohibition nearly drove it to extinction, white spirits had become fashionable and locals were looking global. Back then, it was mostly the export markets that were keeping distilleries alive. On that fateful day, a year after filing for bankruptcy, Michter’s pulled the curtain down, leaving its Pennsylvania premises in disrepair and the ‘Michter’s’ name, left for dead.
It wasn’t long before the name—a deceptively German portmanteau of ‘Michael’ and ‘Peter’, the sons of Louis Forman, the former owner— was resurrected by two men. There was Joseph J Magliocco, a young man running Chatham Imports, who needed a whisky label
