Four Roses Distillery is launching the Experimental Series, a line of limited-edition whiskeys aimed at innovating within its tried-and-true, 10-recipe format. The line’s first release, Experimental Series No. 001, will be available at the Four Roses Distillery Visitor Center in Lawrenceburg, Ky., beginning July 30 with a suggested retail price of $55 for each 375-milliliter bottle, according to a press release.
Experimental Series No. 001 is a 104-proof blend of bourbons aged for six years in Japanese mizunara oak barrels. It follows the distillery’s OBSK recipe — denoting a high-rye mash bill with a yeast strain that delivers a slight spice.
Four Roses master distiller Brent Elliott tested aging bourbon across Four Roses’ recipes in mizunara oak and eventually landed on the OBSK recipe because it complemented the oak’s natural spice while retaining its sweet, nuanced qualities, according to the release. Mizunara oak wasn’t a popular choice as an aging material until the 2010s, and now, the Japanese barrels are some of the most sought-after maturation vessels in spirits.
When E&J Gallo Winery acquired Four Roses from Kirin Holdings in April, Gallo’s chief commercial officer Britt West said that Four Roses’s previous owner had thwarted the brand’s potential for experimentation and that its new ownership would invest in more innovative products. Four Roses says the new aging method’s release and the Experimental Series’s debut is ushering the brand into a “new era of bourbon.”
“This series is an exciting new chapter for us,” Four Roses master distiller Brent Elliott says in the release. “It allows us to take the craftsmanship that’s been at the heart of Four Roses and apply it in entirely new ways, experimenting with finishes and techniques that reveal dimensions of flavor our fans haven’t experienced before.”
