Ryan's Taters and Bad Wine Reviews go to Four Roses
Ryan’s Taters were called upon again, by Bo Tran of Ryan’s Liquor, to make a pilgrimage back to the holy land of Kentucky to select a barrel of Four Roses bourbon. For those of you that are familiar with the hobby you should now make a “SQUEEEE” sound. For those of you unfamiliar you should nod in admiration. We decided getting the latest flight out the night before was the coolest thing to do and would have zero negative consequences. I’ll save you the long story but after being forgotten on the rental car shuttle, dealing with United and Bush Intercontinental’s neandarthal-isms, flying indentured servant class, a late meal, Trump and the Kentucky State Fair impacts, hotel availability fiascos, venturing into Indiana and 375 uber rides a few of us ended up trying to get some sleep at 3:30 a.m. Yeah.
We woke up and I have to be honest I wasn’t in the best of spirits even with a valued pick such as Four Roses waiting for us. This pick was a bit further away than what we had been accustomed to thus far and we made the 30-ish minute trek down south. We were greeted by a security guard who looked like he had been picked straight the fuck out the Amazon rain forest and given a uniform. He did not smile and squinted at Nick Talalalalamandolin (jk – Nick Talamantes), our Four Roses sales manager and chauffeur, as if he was invading the premises. Eventually we were let in and taken to the single barrel picking prison.
We walked in and saw eight beautiful barrels waiting for us and were kindly greeted by two lovely ladies, Jackie and…let’s call her Flo. That sounds like a good name. The barrels have their recipe information turned toward the wall so you don’t know exactly what you’re drinking - more on this and the recipes later. Anyway, Jackie walked us through the process and then began to fill up the eight lonely glasses that sat before us. There’s no secret or proven process for smelling, tasting or fingering the bourbon so I’ll skip the non-important details. We chose, as a group, to not discuss until we had narrowed our choices down to our top three. Except Matt who was still drunk and announced every note and his social security number to all of us. Fuckin’ Matt. One of the fun things Four Roses does is add little glass monocles to the top of the glasses to keep the aromas collected. These are ticking time bombs as breaking them is super easy. HOWEVER! We were determined to be the first group to go without breaking them. That lasted all of ten minutes and Chris decided he hated perfection and smashed one in hellacious fury. You’re a dick, Chris.
We all took turns going to the board and choosing our top three – I lol’d because I was the only person to give ol’ #6 a notch which means the other people clearly don’t know shit about good shit. Anyway we settled on 1, 7 and 8. In terms of the losers – 5 was a dumpster fire, 2 and 3 were meh and 4 needed to be shot into the sun. Alright back to the winners. We ruled out number 7 because it had a very low fill level – this would not yield our leader Bo sick profitzzz that he so deserves. So the decision came down to 1 and 8. It was easy as shit, y’all - #8 was far and above the best one out of the lot in terms of color, mouthfeel, palate and finish (#6 edged out on the nose but this wasn’t far behind at all). #8 was our champion.
As most of you know Four Roses utilizes ten different recipes to make their bourbon and they are:
OBSV
OBSK
OBSQ
OBSO
OBSF
OESV
OESK
OESQ
OESO
OESF
The O stands for the Lawrenceburg, KY distillery. The E and B stand for the mashbill with the E being made up of 75% corn, 20% rye and 5% malted barley while the B is 60% corn, 35% rye and 5% malted barley. S stands for STRAIGHT ASS WHISKEY, HOMEY. The last letter stands for the yeast type which have the following flavor profiles:
V - Delicate Fruitiness
K - Slight Spice
O - Rich Fruitiness
Q - Floral Essence
F - Herbal Essence
Some recipes are rarer than others as they are key “ingredients,” we’ll call them, for some of their normal product line. We were pretty much told not to expect any of those lovely barrels so we were just happy we came to a consensus. AND THEN THEY TOLD US THAT MF BARREL WAS AN OESO WHICH BROUGHT US TO OUR KNEES AS WE BASKED IN THE SWEET, SWEET LIGHT OF FOUR ROSES AMAZINGNESS. After the hootin’ and a hollerin’ was over we had to seal up the barrel and I was given that honor. So I hammered in the bung to the hole…huehuehuehue.
Once we got done doing bunghole stuff we did the nerdy ass picture taking, smiling ear-to-ear, in front of our trophy and signed the barrel to let everyone know THIS IS OURS AND YOU CAN’T HAVE IT. WELL…I MEAN UNTIL IT COMES TO HOUSTON IN A BOTTLE FORM THEN YOU CAN HAVE IT BUT NOT RIGHT NOW OKAY!
After the fan-girling we took a tour of the Cox Creek grounds which included the bottling facility and warehouses. We had the awesome opportunity to taste their small batch product while it was being dumped into troughs in the floor - pure unfiltered bliss. We met several employees - one of which was the QA guy who MAY have hung out with us and let us try some of his personal stash. Maybe.
After having way too much we left the Cox Creek facility to take a true distillery tour which was over in Lawrenceburg - about 45 hours away. I mean it just felt that way after a morning of booze. I’ll spare you those details but just know they have grains which are inspected that are then cooked where proprietary things happen which are then distilled and then re-distilled and then barreled. There you go. We did see Al Young though and he laughed when he saw me because we may have had a few drinks together last week and yeah…
This was an incredible experience and we could not be happier about the outcome. Every single barrel pick has been very unique and that is one of the best parts of this whole process. Having done a few of these now it’s clear there’s no perfect way to go about it other than having a master palate which I clearly do.
This concludes our Kentucky trips for the year (thank God for my health) but we’re already getting our plans in place for next year. A huge thank you to Nick and the entire Four Roses team for being incredible hosts. This bottle should hit sometime this fall so be checking the facebook group for all the dirty deets.
