Four Roses 2024 Limited Edition Small Batch Bourbon Is A Top-Shelf Stunner
The mouthfeel is immediately silky, with notes of tropical fruit and fresh black cherry swirling toward big, fudgy notes of nougat, oak, and tobacco.
Kentucky’s Four Roses distillery is a perennial contender for best bourbon of the year lists, and the incredibly flavorful 2024 release of Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch is no exception.
While many other Kentucky distilleries have added new product lines and labels to their product stables over the last decade, Four Roses has remained mostly spartan. The shorter release list puts a lot of pressure on limited edition batches to be great. Luckily, Four Roses has deep and diverse stocks of whiskey with which to bottle such greatness.
Four Roses is unique among the largest Kentucky whiskey producers for its recipes — the brand produces a total of ten recipes, combining its two mashbills with five distinct yeast strains to create a variety of flavor profiles. Single barrel products from Four Roses each highlight one recipe, while the classic “Yellow Label” is a blend of all ten.
For the Small Batch series, master distillers can use as many or as few recipes as they want. For 2024, Four Roses Master Distiller Brent Elliott selected four batches from the distillery: 12-year OBSV, 15-year OESK, 16-year OESF and 20-year OBSV.
According to Elliott, that makes it even more important to get it right. “Each year,” he said in a statement, “we strive to bring a new and exciting experience to your glass by blending variations of our distinct recipes to create something you’ve never tasted before from Four Roses. This year, the recipes we hand-selected have created something truly vibrant, bright and unique, while still maintaining a nice delicate spice at the end.”
A preview tasting earlier this week debuted just such a whiskey. This 17th release in the Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch series clocks in at 108.2 proof, non-chill filtered, and it is an absolute GigaChad of a dram — something you’ll have to agree with after tasting it, even if you don’t know what a GigaChad is.
The mouthfeel is immediately silky, with notes of tropical fruit and fresh black cherry swirling toward big, fudgy notes of nougat, oak, and tobacco. There’s an earthy baking spice in the background that becomes noticeable once you’ve wrapped your head around the other flavors. Elliott called it allspice and cinnamon during previews, but bitter chocolate and mint appear on the finish before that tingle starts to become unpleasant.
LE 2024 is, in other words, a full-flavored, sweet-spot sipper — one most of us can manage to enjoy neat, in an era of 140-proof behemoths that led to the coining of the term “hazmat whiskey.” According to the distillery, the resulting 2024 Limited Edition Small Batch Bourbon has notes of “creamy vanilla, honey, and brown sugar on the nose, followed by flavors of ripe berries and tangy citrus on the palate. To balance the layers of complexity and sweetness, herbal notes and Four Roses’ signature mellow spice provide a smooth finish.”
A total of 16,690 bottles have been produced for U.S. consumers, and if you’re in Kentucky on September 14th when it’s officially released, you’ll be able to buy at either of Four Roses’ Visitors Centers in Cox’s Creek and Lawrenceburg. The suggested retail price — $220 — is likely to inflate, but since this represents one of the largest volumes released for a Four Roses special edition, the odds are better that you’ll find one than they have been in years. And that’s for the best, because this one is exceptionally harder to put down.
G. Clay Whittaker is a Maxim contributor covering lifestyle, whiskey, cannabis and travel. His work has also appeared in Bon Appetit, Men’s Journal, Cigar Aficionado, Playboy, Esquire, Forbes and Town and Country. Subscribe to his newsletter Drinks & Stuff for news, observations, and perspectives on drinks, and stuff.
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