MASTER TASTING! Dive Into Four Roses 2022 Limited Edition Small Batch With Master Distiller Brent Elliott

Elliott: This is a 14-year-old batch of barrels; it’s the low-rye mash bill with our herbal yeast. This yeast strain at this age melds well with the barrel notes like vanilla and caramel, but it also has a lot of that “F” yeast strain characteristic, which is minty and clove-like. This particular batch is what I wanted to build the entire blend around. It’s still refreshing at 14 years old and retains vibrant characteristics. In my mind, that was one extreme flavor that belonged in this blend. The other end of the spectrum is OBSV.

Here is a 20-year-old bourbon made from a high rye mash bill with the V yeast, which creates delicate fruity flavors like apricot and green apple. This is also the recipe used for our standard single barrel. It’s a nice balance between the rye spice and delicate fruit from the yeast. Once you go out about 20 years, all bets are off. The barrel at this age often has more to do with the final character than the original recipes. While this is oak forward, it retains a lot of rye and fruit. This and the OSEF are the bookends for this bourbon. In the center, we have OESK.

The K strain is a spicy yeast, so it’s all about balance with this one. You want a little spice, a bit of sweetness, and hints of oak, so it’s all about having those elements while creating something interesting. This whisky falls between the other two, but it’s still unique. While the bourbon has more spice and oak, it still has a nice sweetness with fruity characteristics mixed in with vanilla, caramel, and all the typical things you will see in a bourbon aged 15 years. So this is part of the center mass or body of this bourbon. The other central bourbon is the OESV, another whiskey with a low rye mash bill.

This batch is not quite as vibrant and refreshing to me in its characteristics as the OESF batch, but it’s still bright and lively for its age. But there is no question that you are tasting bourbon with a little age on it. That is a quick overview of what went into this year’s limited edition, so now we can look at what happened when these components came together.

For this bourbon I try to do something special every year, such as marrying two mashbills that typically don’t come together or showcase particular recipes. There are infinite possibilities of combinations, so it’s all about where to start. For 2022 I knew I wanted to use that 20-year-old, and I was pretty sure I wanted to use that OESF batch because it was so bright and different. I wanted to see how I could merge these two together. It has notes of all the individual batches but also has a unique fruit that you don’t find in nature. But it’s definitively a fruit flavor. It is balanced, rich, and refreshing at the same time with layers of complexity. I think that complexity is a mark of quality bourbon.