Four Roses Bourbon isn’t as well known as brands like Maker’s Mark, Bulleit, or Wild Turkey. However, Four Roses still commands a place among the most widely enjoyed bourbon brands in the world. Four Roses’ base offerings are a step above many of the other mass-market whiskeys. For this reason, visiting Four Roses is a great stop on any Whiskey Trail Itinerary. The following is a review of a visit to the Four Roses Distillery.
History
As with many of the historic Kentucky distilleries, Four Roses began under another name. The Old Prentice Distillery was founded in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky in 1910. The builders of the original distillery created the buildings in a Spanish Mission-style. Unfortunately, there are varied accounts of the founding of Old Prentice Distillery. Some accounts state that Paul Jones, Jr. is the founder of the brand, while others reference Rufus Mathewson Rose. In the end, the owners sold the brand so many times that the lineage isn’t important.
Seagram’s bought the Four Roses brand in 1943. In a push for profits and to elevate the brand, Seagram’s discontinued Four Roses in the United States in the 1950s. They did this because they chose to focus on Asian and European markets. Therefore, for most of the lifetimes of people currently living, customers could not buy Four Roses in the US. It wasn’t until 1995 that Four Roses returned to sale in the US. Since 1995, the most well-known products from Four Roses include the name-sake label, Small Batch, Single Barrel, and Small Batch Select.
Tour, Tasting, or Something Else?
Four Roses offers both tours and tasting experiences out of the visitor’s center at their distillery. Four Roses operates a separate warehouse and bottling facility in Cox Creek, Kentucky (a little closer to Louisville). The warehouse and bottling facility has some different tour and tasting options than the distillery. The obvious differences between the two are the main subject of the tours: distilling vs bottling. What follows is a review of the options available at the distillery.
The visitor’s center serves as the first point of entry for all guests wanting to go on a tour or tasting. Four Roses recently renovated the visitor center to provide a great introduction to the brand. As with most visitor’s centers, there is a large selection of merchandise and product on display. Visitors are able to purchase Four Roses items as well as some whiskeys that are harder to find outside the distillery.
Check-in for all the tours and tastings is done in the visitor’s center. Four Roses will accept walk-ins for the tours, but most times there won’t be any spaces available. For that reason, it is recommended that visitors obtain reservations in advance.
Tour
The standard tour at Four Roses is called the Distillery Legacy Tour. This is one of the tours that I recommend guests take. The grounds of Four Roses are completely walkable without a tour. That means that guests are able to enjoy the Spanish Mission-style architecture without paying a tour fee. However, you aren’t able to go inside the distillery. That is the reason to pay for the tour (in addition to the tasting included at the end).
The tour will take visitors into the distillery to see the process from grain grinding to cooking the grain to the doubler and then to fermentation. While this distillery will feel somewhat industrial, it will also feel smaller than many others (like Wild Turkey or Bulleit). Some of the fermentation vats are still made of cypress at Four Roses which is something visitors are able to get up close to.
The tour ends with the same bourbon tasting that visitors get if they book the tasting alone. This means that the tour is longer than the tasting at 1 hour and 15 minutes compared to the 30 minutes of the standard tasting. It is also a few dollars more at $22 per person. However, in the end, I think the extra time and little cost is well worth doing the tour here.
Tasting
Four Roses conducts tastings in a glass-enclosed room that sits off from the main merchandise section of the visitor’s center. Unfortunately, this doesn’t provide any great views (like Wild Turkey provides from their tasting room). Actually, it sort of makes those enjoying the tasting on display for the visitors out in the visitor’s center. This is probably a marketing choice by Four Roses; however, it still diminishes the experience a little.
During the tasting, guests have the opportunity to sample the four recipes that Four Roses is famous for. These include the namesake Four Roses, Small Batch, Single Barrel, and Small Batch Select. Guests sit four to a table at small high-top tables. I personally would have preferred more room as there wasn’t a lot of space at the tables. It was just my wife and I at a four-seat table when we visited, and I still am saying this. I wouldn’t have wanted to have four people pushed together unless they were part of our group.
The tasting guide did a good job explaining the different mash bills and yeasts that Four Roses uses. They combine ten different recipes into the various bottlings of their whiskeys. If you pay close attention during the discussion on the recipes, visitors will learn the codes that identify the different recipes. This knowledge is useful in understanding what the flavor profile of a specific bottle would be in a store by reading the code on the label.
At the end of the day, the whiskey tasting at Four Roses was good but not great. The delicious bourbon is hard to savor in 30 minutes; the experience felt rushed. The tasting costs $16 per person. While this isn’t a bad price, the best value is to do the tour and tasting together. As long as you have the time to spend (and I recommend that you make the time), this is a much better value for your investment in both cost and time. Finally, at the end of the tasting, all guests get to take home an etched Four Roses glass.
Something Else
At various times of the year, special tours or tastings are offered. This doesn’t regularly happen so I won’t spend much time writing about it. However, keep an eye on the Four Roses reservations page to see if something is coming up that interests you. For example, at the current time, the special event is a Single Barrel Tasting Experience. This provides guests the opportunity to taste bourbon from single barrels to get greater exposure to each of the mash bills and recipes that Four Roses uses.
Despite looking at this in September, the only available time for this tour is the last weekend of November and first three weekends of December. These aren’t exactly prime times to visit the whiskey country of Kentucky so take factors like this into account when looking to book something. Personally, I would just stick to the normal tour unless something really special aligned with the time I was going to be there.
Reservation Process
Four Roses makes their reservations available online on their website: https://fourrosesbourbon.com/visit/. As with most distilleries, it is advantageous to book your reservations early. As an example, at the time of writing, there are only four days in the next month that have availability for two people to go on the tour. All except for one of these days have only one time slot available. Waiting till the last minute really limits your tour options. Two months out has more, but still spotty, availability. Three to four months out seems to be the point at which tours are available for booking most days of the week.
Cost
The basic tours and tastings at Four Roses are well-priced. While they aren’t free like Buffalo Trace, they are very competitive in the landscape of Kentucky distillery tours. First, a tasting cost $16 per person. This isn’t a bad cost, but I don’t consider it to be the best value at Four Roses. The tours are the best value in my opinion. The 1-hour and 15-minute tour and tasting experience will cost participants $22 each. It will be hard to beat the tour and whiskey that you get for this price. Therefore, I would almost always recommend going for the distillery tour when visiting Four Roses.
