Four Roses’s New Kit Lets You Taste Each of the 10 Bourbons in Its Flagship Whiskey Blend

Jonah Flicker
·3 min read

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Four Roses is a unique Kentucky distillery in that it produces 10 different whiskey mash bills, or recipes, which it blends together into its flagship bourbon. Very few people have actually had the chance to try each of these individual bourbons on their own—until now with the launch of the new Ten Recipe Tasting Experience.

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Four Roses uses two different mash bills and five yeast strains to create the 10 bourbons that are used for the core expression, Four Roses Bourbon, which is aged for a minimum of five years and bottled at 80 proof. Each of the two mash bills—one a low rye recipe (75 percent corn, 20 percent rye) and the other high rye (60 percent corn, 35 percent rye)—is matched with a proprietary yeast strain that gives the whiskey a specific tasting note—V (delicate fruit), K (slight spice), O (rich fruit), Q (floral essence), and F (herbal note). We had a chance to visit the distillery last month and sample each of the 10 bourbons ourselves, and indeed there is a great variety of flavor OBSQ (high rye, Q yeast strain, notes of candy corn, orange, and lavender) and OESO (low rye, O yeast strain, notes of caramel, vanilla pudding, and banana) in particular stood out.

“All of the whiskeys [in the Tasting Experience] are between eight and 10 years old and bottled at 104 proof,” master distiller Brent Elliott told Robb Report. “That’s high enough that the whiskey won’t get cloudy when it’s cold [because it’s non chill-filtered]. These samples are from our annual private barrel program. There are very few people who get to taste all 10 recipes. We wanted to find a way to let consumers taste what we’re talking about, so we came up with this package.” A QR code on the box will allow you to access a guided tasting video exploring each of the 10 recipes with Elliott if you want to take an even deeper dive into the whiskey.

That’s not all that Four Roses has been up to, though. The distillery is celebrating its 135th anniversary this year, and there has been a lot of ups and downs since it was founded in 1888. During the period when bourbon fell out of favor with the public from the 1960s to the ’90s, Four Roses was owned by Seagram and sold in the U.S. as a cheap blend (the good stuff was exported to Japan, where it still remains popular). Led by the efforts of master distiller Jim Rutledge, the bourbon returned to the domestic market after Kirin bought the distillery in 2002, and Elliott took over the role in 2015. For years people referred to the flagship bourbon as “Yellow Label,” and while the color changed a few years ago the entire design has gotten a refresh—new labels, Elliott’s signature, and a 3D version of the classic rose emblem can all be found on the bottle.

The Four Roses Ten Recipe Tasting Experience (SRP $130) will be available at the distillery’s two visitor centers for purchase starting on June 30th, and will hit select retailers in Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, and California in mid-July. If you aren’t going to be in any of those states in the near future, you can purchase the entire Four Roses lineup (and some special editions) from websites like ReserveBar—try the Single Barrel expression for a taste of just one recipe, OBSV.

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