How Four Roses Got It's Mojo Back

Of all the Bourbon success stories of the 21st century—you do realize, dear drinker, that we are living in a New Golden Age of Bourbon, with more innovation, investment, and creativity arguably than ever before—perhaps no tale is greater than the tale of Four Roses. While the brand itself dates back far into the 19th century, the distillery (originally known as Old Prentice) dates to 1910. Post-WWII it was acquired by the giant Seagram's conglomerate, a Canadian concern with a focus on blended whiskey. Four Roses always made superb Bourbon, and their straight whiskey became the top seller in Europe and Japan, but in America, Seagram's made the perhaps curious choice to market the Four Roses brand as a blended whiskey...and it was not a very good blend, either (Jim Rutledge described it to me as "rot-gut"). Hence, generations of discerning American Bourbon lovers grew up thinking that Four Roses was dreck.

Fast forward to circa 2004, and the Seagram's empire has collapsed. Their various brands are being sold off, and Four Roses wound up at the Japanese brewer-distiller Kirin. They immediately made the brave decision to reinstate Four Roses as a only a straight Bourbon whiskey in America. Suddenly, Four Roses Single Barrel was one of the best whiskeys on the shelf, thanks to the legacy of Seagram's incredible quality control and R&D program. Moreover, the Four Roses recipes were "high rye," a term all but unknown at the time, with two mashbills of 20% and 35% rye—this was spicy, powerful Bourbon, yet also possessed of remarkable roundness and complexity thanks to the five different yeasts they employ (a total of 10 recipes, madness!). For many of us in those days, it was suddenly near the top of the best we'd ever had. And then came...the Private Barrels.

I visited Four Roses in early 2007, took the full measure of the distillery and their 10 recipes, and wound up writing a definitive early article on their whole program for Malt Advocate magazine (today it is Whisky Advocate). Along the way, I asked the Four Roses team—including Master Distiller Jim Rutledge, Distillery Manager (the late and great) Al Young, Lead Blender Jota Tanaka, Lab Specialist Brent Elliott [today's Master Distiller], Sales Managers Patty Holland and Dan Gardner, and, crucially, the CEO from Kirin, Teruyuki "Terry" Daino—if they would kindly proceed to bottle up a single barrel selection by The Party Source. They all sort of scratched their heads, saying "well, we've never done THAT before," and then it was agreed: Party Source would launch a private barrel selection of Four Roses. But we were just getting started...

The possibility of bottling all ten of the incredible Four Roses recipes (two mashbills, each made with five different yeasts, a production program of unmatched complexity in Kentucky) was irresistible. I went back to the team and, hat in hand, asked if they could again grant us a tremendous favor: bottle all ten recipes as barrel proof, unfiltered, single barrel expressions. This was no small thing: I was asking for an unprecedented, even intimate exploration of the deepest laboratory secrets of Four Roses' production process, at a time when most distilleries would never even tell you the mash bill! Everyone's head turned to Kirin's boss in the room...and CEO Terry Daino, to his everlasting credit, bravely and boldly and with a sure foresight of what the future could hold, said, hai—YES, we will do it for you.

The rest is history, as TPS became a launching pad, a "test bed" and a "tip of the spear" for this wildly successful private barrel program. Today, the Four Roses national portfolio includes not only the single recipe, unfiltered barrel proof store picks that one finds scattered about the country, but also an availability of the 10 recipes as 100-proof single barrel expressions (here's OBSF, and an OBSK), along with an unfiltered Small Batch Select at 108 proof (my daily pick of the litter, and it comes in a travel/golfing 50ml!), and a very welcome brand-new 100-proof version of the entry level Four Roses in a great big liter bottle. And of course, the standard Four Roses Single Barrel as launched in 2004, is always one of the best bottles on the shelf.