In a liquor landscape flooded with limited-edition bourbon releases, it can be hard to get genuinely excited this day. Unlike the olden days, I am only looking back about a decade or so, when distillers guarded their premium juice the way Willie Wonka locked down his Everlasting Gobstoppers; these days, they revel in throwing their rickhouse doors open. Older, more established distillers and new up-and-comers release so many one-off releases they blur into each other.
Luckily, the team at Four Roses, one of the most decorated bourbon makers out there, makes sure to rise above the noise each year with the release of their annual Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch Bourbon each fall. As one of the most highly anticipated releases on the bourbon lover’s radar, their bottles have become rarified due to their pedigree and excellent liquid.
Famous for using only ten signature bourbon recipes in all their products, Four Roses bourbons are a model of consistency. They exhibit smooth, mellow, and balanced flavor profiles that have made their bourbons one of the benchmarks by which all others are judged.
For this year’s Limed Edition Small Batch Bourbon, the seventeenth in the series, Master Distiller Brent Elliot settled on a blend of four distinct hand-selected batches of bourbon between twelve and twenty years. A deeper dive into the batches reveals the layered flavors one can expect from this year’s release.
They are a 12-year-old and 20-year-old from the OBSV recipe, a 15-year-old OESK, and a 16-year-old OESF. To help decipher what the letters mean, you must pay attention to the last letters in each recipe. That corresponds to the yeast strain used. The “V” strain is famed for producing a delicate fruit flavor, while the “K” is known for its baking spice flavors. The “F” strain, one not often seen, brings an herbal and minty quality to the bourbon. They should combine to create a highly complex and layered bourbon that should reveal its secrets with each sip.
Master Distiller Brent Elliot of Four Roses.
“Each year, we strive to bring a new and exciting experience to your glass by blending variations of our distinct recipes to create something you’ve never tasted before from Four Roses,” said Brent Elliott. “This year, the recipes we hand-selected have created something truly vibrant, bright and unique, while still maintaining a nice delicate spice at the end.”
Four Roses will distribute approximately 16,680 of the 750ml bottles across the United States with a suggested retail price of $220. It is a non-chill filtered and bottled at 54.1% ABV (108.2 proof). The bottles will be available on a limited basis at the Four Roses Distillery Visitor Center in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, or the Four Roses Warehouse & Bottling Facility in Cox’s Creek, Kentucky, starting September 14. The bottles will disappear quickly as collectors snatch them up, especially in retail. Expect to see prices quickly hitting four digits in the online resale market as aficionados look to build out their collections.
If there is any limited-release bourbon to get excited about, this is the one. Each of the past sixteen bottlings has been superb, and there is no reason to expect anything less from this bottle from Four Roses