Four Roses

The Four Roses distillery is located in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. It was founded by Paul Jones Jr in 1888. It produced only Kentucky Straight Bourbon until 1943, when it was bought by Seagram. The group then decided to reserve straight bourbons for Europe and Asia. It only offered blends for the American market. In 2002, the distillery was bought by the Japanese Kirin. They decided to stop the production of blends, to focus on the core business of Four Roses: Kentucky Straight Bourbon.

Four Roses is located on the banks of the Salt River, and thus benefits from very pure water for its fermentations.
It uses two different mashbills (60% corn, 35% rye, 5% malted barley, or 75% corn, 20% rye and 5% malted barley), combined with five types of yeast. This gives him 10 different combinations of distillates to blend.
The distillation is carried out in a column and then in a pot-still, with the spirit flowing at 69-70%. This is reduced to 60 % before cask ageing in 200 litre barrels. Aging is for a minimum of 5 years in a single-storey cellar. Read less