Four Roses 2024 Limited Edition Small Batch

I’d like to thank Four Roses for providing this review sample with no strings attached.

Well, the Autumn Release season is finally here. When Four Roses says there's just over a month left until their annual release, you know that summer is almost over. It doesn’t matter what the calendar says or what society says. The official start of autumn is the day I get my hands on a bottle of Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch.

Or at least it used to be. They got too expensive for me to even consider buying them quite a while ago. Unfortunately, I have bad news on that front. This year’s release is the most expensive yet, with a suggested retail price of $220. So, even though I’ve been tasting and covering these releases since the 2009 edition, not all of you may have my level of experience and knowledge of the product. Let’s go over that a little first.

What is the Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch bourbon?

Every fall, Four Roses releases a bourbon that showcases their ten bourbon “recipes.” They have two mash bills and five yeast strains, which gives them a huge advantage when it comes to blending bourbons (don’t let them hear you call it blending, though; they’re still smarting over being forced to be a Blended Whiskey brand by corporate overlords for decades). They use all ten recipes for their main bourbon, one recipe (OBSV) for the Single Barrel, four (OBSK, OBSO, OESK, and OESO) for the Small Batch, and six (OBSV, OBSK, OBSF, OESV, OESK, OESF) for the Small Batch Select. The yearly Limited Edition Small Batch allows them to experiment with recipes and combinations not used in the main product line. In the past, releases have even used the Q yeast, one of my favorites, though not one that many people prefer. They also tend to use much older products than their mainline bourbons.

Ok, you listed a lot of codes in that last explanation. What do they mean?

The codes are a legacy of being part of the Seagram’s family before it disintegrated at the turn of the millennium. Each code corresponds to a specific combination of mash bill and yeast. Every code starts with "O," the old Seagram’s designation for the current Four Roses Distillery (they had a lot of distilleries). The second letter designates which mash bill is being used: "B" for the 35% rye mash bill or "E" for the 20% rye mash bill, the only two that Four Roses still uses. The third letter will always be "S" because it stands for “Straight Whiskey,” another legacy of Seagram’s diverse product portfolio. The final letter indicates the yeast strain: "V" for delicate fruit notes, "K" for slight spice, "O" for rich fruit notes, "Q" for floral notes (which I love), and "F" for herbal notes. Now, F and Q yeasts tend to make my favorite Four Roses bourbons. I love the herbal and fruity ones. If it tastes like JuicyFruit gum, I’m on board.

Great. So, which recipes are used in the Limited Edition Small Batch this year?

Great question. Brent Elliott used four batches of three different recipes this year: 39% of the product is a 16-year-old OESF, 31% is a 12-year-old OBSV, 23% is a 15-year-old OESK, and the final 7% is a 20-year-old OBSV. All barrels used in this batch were from the bottom three levels of Four Roses’ single-story warehouses.

This year’s release uses a 16-year-old batch of OESF, which I should love, but at that age, there’s a chance that the distillate influence has diminished. Barrels tend to take over in the double-digit ages. Master Distiller Brent Elliott backed this up during his media availability, noting that the OESF batch used "isn’t as typical of some of the ‘F’ strains." He continued that the barrel had taken over, with only echoes of the initial distillate left, and that it was included mainly for mouthfeel.

So, is it any good?

Let’s find out.

Four Roses 2024 Limited Edition Small Batch

Purchase Info: This sample was supplied to me at no cost for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $220 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $14.67

Nose: Caramel apple, milk chocolate, oak, and vanilla. Reminds me of a cross between a Milky Way candy bar and apple cider.

Mouth: Cinnamon, cocoa, oak, caramel, vanilla and hints of fruit.

Finish: Medium to long in length and warm. Notes of Cinnamon, herbal anise, and cola.

Thoughts: Let me just state off the bat that this is a good bourbon (and if you thought there was a "but" coming, here it is), but I’m relatively disappointed—not in the liquid itself, but in the liquid compared to its predecessors. For me, the great thing about Four Roses is that they have the opportunity to make bourbon that’s well outside the stereotypical bourbon flavor profile, even if their flagship product, Four Roses Single Barrel, sticks fairly close to the vanilla/caramel/spice stereotype. To me, this tastes like the barrel took over too much. Some people love that; I don’t. If you’d given me this without a label, I couldn’t have told you who made it. It could have been an extra-aged bourbon from Four Roses, Heaven Hill, Diageo, or many others. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but these used to “Wow!” me. This one doesn’t, and for almost $15 per pour, it should “Wow” everyone who tastes it. So even if I see this (I won’t; I live in a state that gets little and has even less that isn’t in a lottery), I’ll probably pass. $220 for a single bottle of whiskey is a bit too rich for my blood, even if I am a fanboy.

I need to get my hands on some of those F or Q Four Roses batches again. Preferably around ten years old. That’s my happy place. Brent, if you’re reading…hook a guy up, will ya? 😉

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Four Roses x Ooni Bourbon Barrel Aged Honey

I’d like the thank Four Roses, Ooni, and their PR team for sending me this sample with no strings attached.

I am a pizza fanatic. I have it at least once a week and always on Saturday. I choose Saturday because my pizza is not a frozen disk out of the freezer but a fully-from-scratch affair that needs time. To give you a taste of how much I like pizza, we grow about 100 tomato plants of various varieties per summer, with 95% of the harvest going into pizza sauce (the rest goes into my wife’s Bourbon and Beer Chili). I spent twenty years crafting a recipe to my liking, at one point tossing the entire last decade of development when I realized I wasn’t satisfied, then starting from scratch before tweaking it with every batch until I locked in something that I was completely satisfied with. That sauce recipe is a richly spiced Midwestern-style sauce, not a tomato-forward New York/East Coast style. And it was developed to work best with a sourdough crust, whole milk mozzarella, and pepperoni, and to bake well in a home oven.

This is not the style of crust that the people who developed tonight’s pizza topping had in mind. This honey is a partnership between Four Roses and Ooni Pizza Ovens. I thought about getting an Ooni at one point before realizing that my preferred crust isn’t really cut out for that high of heat. People who have them seem to like them, though. And I’m definitely in the “live and let live” camp when it comes to pizza styles.

Here is what the companies have to say about their newest collaboration:

“The bourbon barrel aged honey was crafted in partnership with Bohman Bee Company, specialists in creating local raw honey. Once sourced, the honey was then aged in ex-Four Roses barrels that once aged its Small Batch bourbon. The barrels were freshly dumped and never rinsed to fully impart the richest essence of bourbon. The end result is a honey with tasting notes of ripened red berries and dried spices, perfect for drizzling on freshly made pizza and a sweetener in summer cocktails.”

IMAGE: Delicious honey that makes me smile. It gets a smile rating.

So if you’ve been around a while, you know I love honey. Almost as much as I love pizza and bourbon. And even though that is the case, I seldom remember that a honey drizzle is the perfect topping for a spicy pepperoni pizza. I am going to need to remember it in the future because this is just the best addition to my home-cooked Saturday pizza. The sweetness of the honey really complements the spicy, salty flavor of the pizza. Because this honey was aged in Four Roses barrels, which can be fruitier than other brands, it brings out the fruity notes of the tomato. It’s really quite tasty.

Of course, if you are not a pizza fan (gasp!) that doesn’t mean that you can’t try this honey. On its own, it has a wonderfully fruity and slightly boozy note from the barrel aging. Not as much as other barrel-aged honey that we’ve covered, but it’s very mellow, much like Four Roses. It also works great as the sweetener in cocktails made with Four Roses. All in all, if you are a Four Roses fan, like I am, give this one a try. It’s available on the Ooni website for $16 for a 10-ounce bottle. I like this one a lot.

If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch, 2023

I’d like to thank Four Roses for providing this review sample with no strings attached.

I don’t get to write about Four Roses very often, even though I am a big fan of their products. The issue is that they’ve only got four products. And I’ve written about all of them multiple times. So when Fall Limited Bourbon Release Season approaches, I get very excited because it lets me let my inner fanboy out. Because I am an unashamed Four Roses Fanboy. Maybe less so now that these releases have reached the $200 price range and are basically only available via retailer lottery. But that’s primarily due to my short attention span and the fact that there is no use getting excited about something that 1) I won’t see and 2) I couldn’t really afford if I did. (That excitement level will shoot through the roof, should I ever win a lottery for this product…I might even splurge and purchase it.)

So, though I’ve been covering these for most of the last 12 years, let’s go over some of the basics.

What is the Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch bourbon?

Every fall, Four Roses releases a bourbon that can showcase their ten bourbon “recipes.” They have two mash bills and five yeast strains, which gives them a huge advantage when it comes to blending bourbons (don’t let them hear you call it blending, though; they are still smarting over being forced to be a Blended Whiskey brand by corporate overlords for decades). They use all ten for their main bourbon, one recipe (OBSV) for the single barrel, four (OBSK, OBSO, OESK, and OESO) for the Small Batch, and six (OBSV, OBSK, OBSF, OESV, OESK, OESF) for Small Batch Select. The yearly Limited Edition Small Batch allows them to experiment with recipes and combinations that they don’t use in the main product line. In the past, releases have even used the Q yeast, one of my favorites but one many people do not prefer. They also tend to use much older product than their main-line bourbons.

Ok, you listed a lot of codes in that last explanation. What do they mean?

The codes are a legacy of being a part of the Seagram’s family before it disintegrated back at the turn of the millennium. Each of the codes corresponds to one combination of mash bill and yeast. Every code starts with O, which is the old Seagram’s designation for the current Four Roses Distillery (they had a lot of distilleries). The second letter designates which mash bill is being used. It will be a B if it uses the 35% rye mash bill or an E if it uses the 20% rye mash bill, the only two that Four Roses still uses. The third letter will always be an S because it stands for “Straight Whiskey” and is another legacy of Seagram’s having a lot of products in their portfolio. The final letter tells you which yeast strain is being used. V yeast tends to provide a delicate fruit note, K a slight spice, O rich fruit notes, Q tends to provide a floral note (that I love), and F tends to yield herbal notes.

Great. So, which are used in the Limited Edition Small Batch this year?

Great question. Brent Elliott used four batches of three different recipes this year. 40% of the product is a 14-year-old OESK, 35% is a 12-year-old OESV, 20% is a 16-year-old OESV, and the final 5% is a 25-year OBSV. All barrels used in this batch were from the bottom three levels of Four Roses’ single-story warehouses.

So is it any good?

Let’s find out.

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch, 2023

Purchase Info: This sample was provided for review purchases at no charge. The suggested retail price is $199.99.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $13.33

Nose: Vanilla, caramel, rose petals, spearmint, oak and cinnamon.

Mouth: Cinnamon spice, honey, floral spearmint, stone fruits, and oak.

Finish: Long and hot. Notes of cinnamon spice, nutmeg, rose petals, and oak.

Thoughts: I wanted not to like this. I wanted not to be tempted to enter lotteries for this. I wanted not to have to spend $200 on a single bottle of bourbon should I be one of the folks chosen to purchase a bottle. Guess what? I love this. Even graded on a $200 curve, I love this. I fully expected to say the opposite. That nothing is worth that price. But I'll be damned if I don't need to eat some crow, along with my preconceived notions. This is spicy and floral with just the right amount of oak. It's just absolutely delicious.

This is not just in the running for BourbonGuy Bourbon-of-the-Year; it’s leading the pack by a long margin. Hell, it’s the first one to get a heart in well over a year.

Did you enjoy this post? If you want to support the work going on here at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch (tasting journals, stickers, pins, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com.

OSMO Salt x Four Roses Toasted Vanilla Bourbon Salt

This jar of OSMO salt and a bottle of Four Roses Small Batch were provided as part of a media kit to announce the launch of the product with no strings attached.

Sorry about missing Tuesday. I was out on a rare date with my wife. We went out for lunch, we went to antique stores, we went to record stores, and we stopped off at a local brewery. It was a lovely day spent with the love of my life. I wouldn’t necessarily call it romantic. I mean, we stared at our phones more often than we stared into each other’s eyes while we had our beers. But after 25 years of marriage, I think that the fact that we are still talking to one another and consider each other best friends is romantic enough to count. So…yeah. Let’s just say we were out on a romantic Day Date that was too much fun to allow for writing.

And it is with romance in my heart that I write about tonight’s…salt?

Bill? Is that right? Salt? Are we talking about salt tonight? You know this is a bourbon site, right? Ok, I sure hope you know what you are doing here.

Yes, dear reader, salt. Salt that is a co-branded collaboration between Four Roses Bourbon and OSMO Salt. Now, why did I bring up romance at the beginning? Well, as we all know, the foundation legend of the Four Roses brand involved a young man who was looking to marry a young lady. He asked her to wear a corsage of four roses to the ball if she was going to accept his proposal. And, as the legend has it, she did just that. It’s a nice story. There is evidence that it is nothing more than a legend, but what would be the fun in that? And besides, Valentine’s Day is coming up soon.

So, how does this salt taste? What makes it different than other salts that you might have on hand? Well, it is sweet. I’ll have tasting notes below, but here is what the PR firm had to say:

Four Roses was built on a 134 year old love story, making the bourbon the perfect spirit to toast with on Valentine’s Day. This year, Four Roses sought out to create an offering to elevate the date-night-in and make restaurant quality drinks and meals right at home. Tapping OSMO Salt -  the premium salt company created by celebrity Chef Nick Digiovanni intended to easily turn homemade dishes into Michelin-quality meals - for its first-ever culinary collab, the result is the new Toasted Vanilla Bourbon Salt, perfect for rimming bourbon drinks and for home chefs to add a robust yet sweet final touch to meals. 

OSMO Salt x Four Roses Toasted Vanilla Bourbon Salt

Purchase Info: This sample was provided free of charge by the producer for review purposes. It can be purchased from the OSMO website for $18.99 for a 3.5 oz jar. You can also buy the salt with a bottle of Four Roses Small Batch from ReserveBar for $60.99.

Nose: This is a caramel and vanilla bomb on the nose.

Mouth: Caramel, vanilla, and coconut, which transition into salt as the flavors wash off.

Thoughts: I'm probably not the target market for this, as my usual cocktail is whiskey in a glass. I like it as much as I like any salt, but I’m not really a “glass rimmer,” if you know what I mean. That said, though, if you make cocktails on the regular, this could be an interesting addition to your tool kit.

Along with the salt and bourbon came a cocktail recipe that I quite enjoyed. Created by Abby Martinie, Four Roses brand ambassador and mixologist, it contains raspberries, bourbon, Crème de Cacao, brown sugar, and lemon juice. Of course, the drink is garnished with tonight’s salt, as seen in the photo above. I really like this one. And if you are a person who likes pink, fruity drinks (or know someone who does), this is one that it wouldn’t hurt to keep in your recipe holder.

Twisted Sour

  • 1.5 oz Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon

  • 0.5 oz Crème de Cacao

  • 0.75 oz lemon juice

  • 0.5 oz brown sugar syrup

  • 3-4 muddled raspberries

Combine all ingredients in a shaker. Add ice and shake. Rim rocks glass with Osmo Toasted Vanilla Bourbon Salt. Double strain over fresh ice into a rimmed rocks glass.

Cocktail Thoughts: If you like raspberry, this is pretty good. I'm not convinced the salt adds more than an aesthetic touch after the first sip, but if you are making a cocktail for your loved one (and the theme of the night is romance, after all), you might as well make it as pretty as possible, right? Though the smell of the salt on the rim does add a little bit of a sweet note as you sip.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, maybe you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee in return. Go to ko-fi.com/bourbonguy to support. And thank you, BourbonGuy.com is solely supported via your generosity.

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Four Roses 2022 Limited Edition Small Batch Bourbon

I’d like to thank the folks at Four Roses for providing this review sample to me with no strings attached.

IMAGE: A sample bottle of the 2022 Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch. Copy includes: Barrel Strength, 109 proof. OESF - 14 Years, OESV - 14 Years, OESK - 15 Years, OBSV - 20 years.

It is that time of year again. That time when we feature all of the upcoming limited edition bourbons that companies are hoping you will love. We showcased Yellowstone’s 2022 limited on Tuesday and tonight we turn our attention to one that used to be the highlight of the bourbon year for me.

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch is a yearly limited edition release showcasing the creative side of Four Roses. Throughout each Spring and Summer, Master Distiller Brent Elliott and his team start gathering the bourbons that may eventually make their way into the Fall’s concoction. After extensive experimentation and testing, they develop numerous blends and then eventually whittle it down to one. And they do a good job. Every year it is one to keep an eye out for.

This year the blend includes bourbons ranging from 14 to 20 years old. It features four of their bourbon recipes: a 14-year-old OESF, a 14-year-old OESV, a 15-year-old OESK, and a 20-year-old OBSV. The F yeast has me pretty excited. While Q yeast is my favorite, F is a close second. If I see a Q or an F yeast used in a Single Barrel Pick while out shopping, it always comes home with me.

The suggested retail price is $179.99 per bottle. It’ll roll out to retailers in September, but if you are feeling lucky and will be able to make it to Kentucky to pick it up between September 17 and October 16, they will be having a lottery drawing to purchase a bottle at the distillery gift shop. Visit the Four Roses Small Batch Limited Edition website between August 22 and August 28 to enter.

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2022

Purchase Info: This sample was provided by the producer for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $179.99.

Price Per Drink (50 mL): $12.00

Details: 54.5% ABV. Features a 14-year-old OESF, a 14-year-old OESV, a 15-year-old OESK, and a 20-year-old OBSV.

Nose: Caramel, vanilla, oak, cinnamon, strawberry Starburst candy.

Mouth: Cinnamon, leather, caramel, oak, and Juicy Fruit Gum.

Finish: Warm and long. Notes of leather, cinnamon, and oak.

Thoughts: This is pretty tasty. There is a split decision in this house as to whether we would actually spend the asking price, though. My wife is on the yes side. I'm in the no camp.

This is really good. I'm just not sure that it is $180 good. That said, very little is. And, harsh as it sounds, those I've tried that we decided might be worth $180 are better than this. I'd buy this in a heartbeat at the $130-ish price tag it used to have. But I had a hard time paying last year’s $150 price. And there is just no way I can bring myself to pay the $180 this year. And I say all of this as a devout Four Roses Fanboy.

It saddens me to be priced out of the market for one of my favorite bourbons, but this is the first year that I can unequivocally say that, to me, this is not worth the asking price. That said, if money is no object, this is very good bourbon, and you should pick it up, drink it and enjoy the heck out of it. If you have a budget, as I do, then you’ll need to decide if you want to use part of it on a bottle that prices at $12 per pour should you happen to win your local lottery.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, maybe you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee in return. Go to ko-fi.com/bourbonguy to support. And thank you, BourbonGuy.com is solely supported via your generosity.

Of course, if you want to support BourbonGuy.com and get a little something back in return, you can always head over to BourbonGuyGifts.com and purchase some merch. I’ve made tasting journals, stickers, pins, posters, and more.