Yahoo Lifestyle Taste Test: Four Roses New Single Barrel Whiskey Is a Spicy Bourbon for Rye Lovers
Welcome to Taste Test, where every week our critic Jonah Flicker explores the most buzzworthy and interesting whiskeys in the world. Check back each Sunday for his latest whiskey review.
Four Roses is one of the greats. That’s not because this Kentucky distillery has a stable of highly allocated unicorn bourbons that whiskey fans have to mortgage their houses to buy (there’s only one, the consistently fantastic Limited Edition Small Batch). That’s because this distillery just makes really good bourbon that is very fairly priced, and that includes its single-barrel expression. Last fall, Four Roses expanded that whiskey to include all 10 of its recipes, and the first bottles in this new collection are only just becoming available nationwide. One of the best, it turns out, is also one of the spiciest.
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As a reminder for those who are less familiar with Four Roses, the distillery makes 10 different recipes that it blends together for its core expression. That’s the result of two different mashbills, one higher in rye grain (B with 35 percent rye) and the other lower (E with 20 percent)—although both could be considered high rye compared to other bourbons—and five different yeast strains. That amounts to 10 different bourbons, each with its own unique flavor profile that are the building blocks for master distiller Brent Elliott to play with and come up with new releases. The distillery introduced two more mashbills last year—one with a very high 43 percent rye, the other with a low 10 percent rye—but it’ll be a few years before the public gets to try these as they mature in warehouses. We are now able to taste three of the distillery’s recipes, however, in a trio of new single-barrel releases that were unavailable to the general public.
The core single-barrel bourbon is OBSV, which translates to Four Roses bourbon (O) made from the high-rye mashbill (B), a straight whiskey (S) that uses yeast strain V. The three new single barrels are OBSF, OESK, and OESO, each bottled at 100 proof like the original and aged for about seven to nine years. They are all very different from each other, but the best one, in my opinion, is the most herbal and spicy of the bunch: OBSF. The key is the F yeast strain, which the distillery describes as adding herbaceous notes, and that really is the case. According to Elliott, this is the key bourbon used in the blend for the distillery’s Small Batch Select, one of its best whiskeys, and tasting it as a single-barrel release shows why.
OBSF is a bourbon for rye whiskey lovers. It maintains the sweet earthy notes that defines Four Roses, but there are bright, fragrant hits of anise, menthol, mint, and black pepper, with some clove and cherry on the finish. This is like a crisper, drier version of regular Four Roses, and tasting it on its own, as is the case with the other single-barrel releases, really shows the wide “flavor map,” as Elliott calls it, that he has to work with. Try OBSF in a Manhattan if you’re a cocktail drinker, because this whiskey’s flavor profile works as well as a rye whiskey, particularly if you’re talking about a Kentucky-style rye with the minimum amount of rye grain in the mashbill.
It’s certainly worth trying the other new single-barrel releases as well for comparison’s sake, and also because they are very good whiskeys. And there’s more to come. Over the next two years, the rest of the single-barrel recipes will be released, and then they will all be available on a rotating basis. I’m looking forward to trying them all, and maybe I’ll have a new favorite to opine about here next year.
Score: 91
100 Worth trading your first born for
95 – 99 In the Pantheon: A trophy for the cabinet
90 – 94 Great: An excited nod from friends when you pour them a dram
85 – 89 Very Good: Delicious enough to buy, but not quite special enough to chase on the secondary market
80 – 84 Good: More of your everyday drinker, solid and reliable
Below 80 It’s Alright: Honestly, we probably won’t waste your time and ours with this
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