Four Roses Private Selection (OESK, Hi-Time Wine) - Review
Age: 10 years, 1 month (varies)
Barrel type: Standard bourbon (charred fresh oak)
Region: Kentucky
ABV: 59%
Price: $75
Additional details: non-chill filtered, natural color
There are many who regard Four Roses Private Selection bottlings as the best value in bourbon today. I'm not one to disagree.
Four Roses produces three widely available bourbons: Yellow Label, Small Batch, and Single Barrel. In addition to those three releases, however, the distillery invites partner bars and liquor stores to make "private selections." In essence, the Private Selection program means that these partners get to try a few barrels of Four Roses bourbon and select the ones that they like best, which the distillery then bottles for them at cask strength. The resulting single-barrel picks are exclusive to that bar or liquor store. In practice, this means that each Private Selection represents a barrel that was chosen by the Four Roses distillery managers for its quality, and then selected by a liquor store (hopefully by an employee or owner with a discerning palate) that found it to be particularly appealing. Unsurprisingly, given the selection process, these private picks tend to be a cut above mass-market bourbons.
A further unusual fact about Four Roses enhances the uniqueness of this program. Unlike most distilleries, Four Roses has a huge variety of "recipes" for its bourbon because they have five different types of yeast and two mash bills. While other articles cover this in more detail, the basic gist is that Four Roses's bourbon always comes with a four-letter code that indicates the amount of rye in the mash bill and the yeast used. The code is always formatted as "O__S__", with the first blank indicating the mash bill (B is a high rye formula at 35% rye, while E is a still relatively high 20% rye) and the last blank indicating the yeast (K, Q, O, F, and V).
Here's the distillery's description of the resulting 10 recipes:
OBSV - Delicate Fruity (Pear, Apricot), Spicy, Creamy
OBSK - Rich in Spiciness, Full Body
OBSQ - Floral (Rose Petal), Spicy, Medium Body
OBSO - Slightly Fruity, Spicy, Medium Body
OBSF - Mint, Fruity, Spicy, Full Body
OESV - Delicate Fruity, Fresh, Creamy
OESK - Spicy, Full Body
OESQ - Floral (Rose Petal & Acacia), Banana, Refreshing, Medium Body
OESO - Fruity (Red Berries), Medium Body
OESF - Mint, Fruity, Full Body
I and two buddies ordered three different Four Roses Private Selections, all from Hi-Time Wine Cellars out in California, which has a strong reputation for making good picks. Mine was an OESK bottle, while they got an OBSV and an OBSQ (which I'll summarize in shorter notes in a separate article). OESK is a widely admired recipe, but, to be honest, they are all supposed to be spectacular bourbons. My eventual goal is to try and review all 10 recipes.
Appearance: Four Roses is a rich, dark ruddy brown in the glass, so right away, it captivates my attention. This bourbon is as beautiful as it gets, and as handsome as any barrel-proof bourbon on the market today.
The bottle is also a showstopper thanks to its unique shape and stunning, embossed images of the Four Roses logo (featuring, you guessed it, four roses) front and center. The labels also are quite informative, providing the basic information such as ABV and the merchant who made the selection while also including some highly detailed information about the specific warehouse location (including information that allows you to figure out whether it was stored in a high or low row in the warehouse). Some bourbon nerds geek out over that information and have theories over which locations produce certain types of effects in aging, such as an oak-heavy profile or a fruit-forward one, but I have to admit that's a bit too in the weeds for me.
Nose: There's a lot going on in this boozy power punch of an opening. The strongest aromas are cedar wood, chocolate fudge, and vanilla. That chocolate fudge is really the star of the show as I go in for a few more whiffs. I love bourbons and scotches that have pronounced chocolate notes, and this bourbon delivers with a very sweet, rich mélange. This is a French dessert bar whipped into liquid form. There is also an oily or gassy edge to the nose, almost verging on the smell of a grill right after igniting it with lighter fluid.
Palate: The first time you sip this, that classic honeyed bourbon flavor will whet the palate for future forays into this complex bourbon. Further sips reward the taste buds with Aztec chocolate filled with chilis or crushed red pepper -- this is a spicy and hot bourbon! Unlike Elijah Craig Barrel Proof, which is an oak monster, Four Roses has comparatively mild woodiness, although there is a respectably firm backbone of woody flavors. I also don't detect as much fruitiness as I got in standard Four Roses Single Barrel, which features the distillery's OBSV recipe and, when I tried it, had these unique and fun pear flavors that I don't often find in bourbon. This 10-year old OESK is heavy on the rye spice in spite of the fact that it's the lower-rye mash bill, perhaps because the K yeast supposedly highlights spice notes.
Finish: The warm finish concludes with notes of cherry, rye spice, vanilla, and oak after the initial sweetness fades. Those notes of cherry and vanilla did not show up on the palate for me, so they added another layer to this bourbon. It's a surprisingly fruity and mildly drying finish, and it concludes with a ghostlike reminder of that pronounced chocolate note. Delicious.
Value for Money and Final Impressions: There’s a great story about Four Roses bourbons that speaks to the distillery’s standards. In the 70s and 80s, the brand experienced a serious decline and became a bottom-shelf brand. College kids from that time period got used to thinking of it as a cheap plastic jug of liquor best reserved for frat parties and mixed drinks. Oddly enough, however, the brand retained a lot of cachet in Japan, where the distillery’s more carefully aged and selected whiskies continued to be sold. In the 1990s, Kirin purchased the distillery. To remove the stain on the name, the new owners bought all the remaining stock of Four Roses out on the market, poured it down the drain, and didn’t come back to market for years. During that period of exile, the new owners and managers restarted from square one and imposed much higher quality controls to the whiskey coming out of Four Roses’s stills. When they reintroduced the brand with releases like the celebrated Small Label and Single Barrel, it became a huge sensation.
Four Roses Private Selections represent some of the best barrels that the distillery has, selected my experts who love bourbon and have tasted more of it than most of us will in our lives. Moreover, despite that pedigree, and despite being bottled at impressive natural cask strength, Private Selections are still being sold at a fairly reasonable price point. Along with Elijah Craig Barrel Proof, which is getting hard to find, these bottles may be the best value in bourbon today.
I’m thrilled to have purchased this bottle. It’s a hell of a bourbon. The most similar whiskey that I’ve tried is Old Forester 1920, which is right around the same price point (maybe $5-10 cheaper depending on source) and same ABV, while offering a similar rich, chocolate profile.
Rating: A