Review: Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2015

“From time to time, our Master Distiller selects a few exceptional barrels of our 10 Bourbon recipes to become Limited Edition releases. These special releases are barrel strength and non-chill filtered, so you get to savor them exactly as they come out of the barrel. We hope you look for them, find them and enjoy them. Because they’re some of the best Bourbons we’ve put in a bottle. Anytime. Ever.” – Four Roses Website

We saw this behind the counter at a liquor store, grabbed it up, and immediately and cracked it open the same night. The four small batches blended together to create this Bourbon are OBSK – 16 years old, OESK – 15 years old, OESK – 14 years old, and OBSV – 11 years old. We have bottle number 8576/12672.

The Four Roses recipe stuff is very interesting and you can check out all of the different recipes/information at Bourbonr, they do a great job over there.

Company
: Kirin

Distillery: Four Roses Distillery

Location: Near Lawrenceburg, KY

Mash bill: A blend of four select bourbons ⬆️

Age: 11-16 year blend ⬆️

ABV: 54.3% (108.6 proof)

Released: Fall 2015

Price: $85

Color: Golden Blonde with red highlights

Nose: Strawberry, cherry, very fruit forward, sweet cinnamon like Red Hots, cloves, no ethanol, and a little bit of oaky barrel funk.

Taste: My first taste was a lot of fruit, strawberry, cherry, cinnamon. It was like BAM, fruit in your face! The texture is really nice and creamy. The spiciness is coming from the “K” yeast, the fruit is from the “V” yeast.

Finish: Long, warm finish down your throat. Leaves some heat on your teeth, gums and belly. Mmmmmmmmm.

Overall: This has some heat but is balanced beautifully with the sweetness and fruit. This could definitely be a crowd pleasing Bourbon and I could see Bourbon lovers of all types enjoying this together.

Yum yum yummy yums.

This is a lovely Bourbon and I will be drinking this A LOT. Well, until it reaches the halfway point, which is when I tend to slow down. Back to the Bourbon!  I pretty much love everything Four Roses does, but an interesting note, is that this was one of the last Bourbons worked on by Jim Rutledge before he retired. Not sure what is in store for Four Roses, but, I’m hoping for the best.

Rating
: 5/5 booyah.

Holy crap guys, it’s been about 6 months since we fired up Barrels and Mash and we finally have our first 5/5 review! Kate and I drank this one together, and we obviously were completely blown away. We now have a new best bottle in our collection. After cracking it, we rushed back to the only liquor store in the area we knew to have it and snagged their last bottle, something we very rarely do. The complexity in this bottle is killer, and the balance is spot on. This is a perfect goodbye note from Jim Rutledge to all the Four Roses fans out there.

-Kris

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7 thoughts on “Review: Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch 2015

  1. Love the review. Couldn’t agree more, this was a great release – one of my favorite FR releases. Hope you don’t mind that I link this review under my “Friends and Peers” section at the end of my review so that people can read different reviews on the same bourbon. Cheers guys!

    1. Hi Jennifer! Thanks for the question. Most distilleries pride themselves on their proprietary yeast strains, and in the case of Four Roses, they have five! Each strain (V,K,O,Q, and F) brings a different characteristic to the Bourbon. Four Roses uses those 5 yeasts in combination with 2 mashbills to create 10 unique recipes, 3 of which are blended in this release. The Bourbonr link in this review has a breakdown of when each recipe is used! Happy sipping!

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