Another stellar annual limited edition Bourbon from Four Roses that tastes like Christmas morning.
The Four Roses trademark was filed in 1888, but there are conflicting origin stories going all the way back to 1860. By 1900 it had become a brand well-known for quality. But from the 1950s-1990s the brand was neglected during a period of mergers and acquisitions — reducing it to a blended, sub-par hash of obscurity. Fortunately, in 2002 Kirin acquired the historic brand in a quick three-way brand-swap. When that happened, legendary Bourbon man Jim Rutledge was given free rein to bring the focus back to making high-quality Straight Bourbon from their gorgeous Spanish-Mission-style distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. The Bourbons they product today are stunning.
The annual release of Four Roses Small Batch Limited Edition is like a Whiskey Christmas morning. We get to unwrap the bottles and take a deep dive into a tasty gift from Santa Bourbon-Claus. Four Roses uses two different mash bills and five different yeast strains to create ten different Bourbon profiles. Each cask is given a special letter-code to identify it in the rickhouse. Those Bourbons are then blended to craft the signature flavor profile. But the "small batch" versions use four of those combinations — both mash bills but only two of the yeast strains — and it’s a little different each time. For 2020, they used casks aged between twelve and nineteen years and bottled it at 55.7% ABV without chill filtration.
Smartass Corner:
Using the coded formulations of Four Roses, the 2020 Limited Edition is comprised of a twelve year-old Bourbon from the OBSV recipe, a twelve year-old OESV, a sixteen year-old OESK, and a nineteen year-old OBSK.
*This bottle is a collector’s item; we will not be able to entertain any refunds or exchanges.
**Individual orders are limited to one item per person, as we wish to give everyone the opportunity to participate.
***Any kind of transit damage is insured and will be reimbursed.