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Four Roses Bourbon


Joe Riley

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Four Roses Bourbons have never "officially" been available in the Washington, D.C. market until this past week, and finally EVERY significant Bourbon producer is now represented here in the nation's capital.

Ever since the Kirin Brewing Company bought Four Roses from Seagram's approximately 20 years ago, the national expansion of Four Roses has been glacially-slow. Seagram's sold the Four Roses Bourbons overseas and in Kentucky. It has long been the best-selling Bourbon in Japan, hence the interest by Kirin, the company which essentially "saved" Four Roses and has been slowly restoring it's reputation here in the U.S.A. ever since.

Fans nationwide give credit to longtime Master Distiller Jim Rutledge, who convinced the Kirin folks to allow the Bourbons to be sold in the U.S.A. again (as they once had been) and to discontinue the "not very good" Four Roses Blended Whiskey, a Seagram's "7 Crown"-like product.

There are three bottlings which are available all the time (in the U.S.A. market):

80-proof "yellow label" - their flagship product, around $17.49/bottle

90-proof "small batch", around $28.99

100-pf "single barrel", around $37.49 a bottling which has been called the "best Bourbon under $50/bottle"

In addition, Four Roses can release two specialty bottlings, one in the summer and one in the fall. The fall bottling is "Mariage", a higher-proof blend of Bourbons.

The single adjective which most accurately describes Four Roses is: Mellow. They have no sharp edges, very easy drinking, and they work perfectly well in any cocktail which calls for Bourbon.

Unique among Bourbon distillers, Four Roses uses five different mashbills and two different proprietary yeasts, which creates ten different recipes and they distill each one and then do some judicious and interesting blending.

If you consider yourself a Bourbon drinker and you haven't tried Four Roses, then your frame of reference for great Bourbon is incomplete and I urge you to try at least one, if not all three. Both Bourbon bars in D.C. have them, so you can certainly go by there and give them a try if you prefer not to buy a bottle first.

Everything that you need to know about Four Roses may be found here: Four Roses

(Jake Parrott: Please feel free to correct me if I've mis-spoken ;) )

In some of their old magazine ads, their slogan was, "Wouldn't you rather be drinking Four Roses?" My answer is, "Why, yes. Yes I would." :P

1955 Four Roses ad: "It's Four Roses time in Washington"

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I wasn't aware that Four Roses had ever gone away. This brought back a memory from the late 1970s when someone in my building got a cute little maltese dog (illegally for this building, alas). One of his friends made a dog bed out of a cardboard Four Roses box. He cut an entryway in the front, so the box wound up spelling FOU SES. So, the dog was named Fouses (pronounced Fooooses) because "every dog should have his name on his house." ;)

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I wasn't aware that Four Roses had ever gone away. This brought back a memory from the late 1970s when someone in my building got a cute little maltese dog (illegally for this building, alas). One of his friends made a dog bed out of a cardboard Four Roses box. He cut an entryway in the front, so the box wound up spelling FOU SES. So, the dog was named Fouses (pronounced Fooooses) because "every dog should have his name on his house." ;)

Ha! That's a cute story, Barbara :P "Fooses" - I love it.

Yeah, Seagram's owned them in the 70's, and the only product you could readily buy was the blended whiskey, which was probably very similar to Seagram's "7 Crown" (i.e. a grain neutral spirit with a little whiskey added for color and flavor).

Kirin quite literally "saved" Four Roses, and really put them on their feet. Now they stand tall with their Bourbon bretheren - Jim Beam, Heaven Hill, Sazerac, Wild Turkey, Brown-Forman, et. al.

I've been to Four Roses in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky but, alas, I've not yet taken the tour (there wasn't time when I visited). I hope to get back there this year and correct this oversight, and perhaps visit their Cox's Creek facility (an hour away from the distillery) as well.

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