Four Roses Distillery

Few American whiskey producers can claim a system as distinctive as Four Roses. At its Spanish Mission-style distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, the company produces ten separate bourbon recipes under one roof, pairing two mash bills with five proprietary yeast strains. By the distillery's own account, no other major Kentucky producer works this way, and it makes Four Roses one of the most instructive producers a drinker can study: same water, same stills, same barrels, yet ten distinct whiskeys.

History & Heritage

The Four Roses name was trademarked in 1888 by Paul Jones Jr., a Louisville whiskey merchant who claimed the brand had been produced and sold as early as the 1860s. Jones built the business on Louisville's Whiskey Row, and in 1922 the Paul Jones Company acquired the Frankfort Distilling Company, one of the few firms licensed to sell whiskey for medicinal purposes during Prohibition. That license carried Four Roses through the dry years intact.

Seagram purchased Frankfort Distilling in 1943, largely to obtain the Four Roses name. In the decades that followed, Seagram pulled the straight bourbon from American shelves, selling a blended whiskey domestically while the bourbon became a top seller in Europe and Japan. When Seagram's holdings were broken up, the brand passed briefly through Vivendi, then Diageo and Pernod Ricard, before Kirin Brewery Company of Japan acquired it in February 2002, formed Four Roses Distillery LLC, discontinued the blends, and returned Kentucky straight bourbon to the American market. Kirin still owns the distillery as of July 2026. Jim Rutledge, master distiller from 1995, led that revival until his retirement in 2015, when Brent Elliott succeeded him. Elliott was named Master Distiller/Blender of the Year at Whisky Magazine's Icons of Whisky America awards in February 2020.

The Lawrenceburg distillery itself, built in 1910 and originally known as the Old Prentice Distillery, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Warehousing and bottling take place at a separate facility in Cox's Creek, Kentucky.

The Whiskey

Everything Four Roses makes is Kentucky straight bourbon, built from two mash bills: recipe E, at 75 percent corn, 20 percent rye, and 5 percent malted barley, and recipe B, at 60 percent corn, a high 35 percent rye, and the same 5 percent malted barley. Each is fermented with one of five yeast strains, labeled V, K, O, Q, and F, yielding the ten recipes encoded in names like OBSK and OESO. The flagship Four Roses Bourbon draws on up to all ten. Four Roses Bourbon Single Barrel showcases a single recipe at a time, which is why The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library includes recipe-specific selections such as Four Roses Bourbon Single Barrel OBSF, Four Roses Bourbon Single Barrel OBSK, Four Roses Bourbon Single Barrel OESK, and Four Roses Bourbon Single Barrel OESO alongside the standard expressions. Four Roses Small Batch Select, a marriage of six of the ten recipes launched in 2019 as the first permanent addition to the lineup in more than a decade, ranked third in Whisky Advocate's Top 20 Whiskies of 2019, and Four Roses Bourbon Single Barrel was named World's Best Single Barrel Bourbon at the 2024 World Whiskies Awards.

Why It Matters

For those who appreciate good whiskey, Four Roses offers something rare: a controlled experiment you can taste. Comparing two single barrel recipes side by side isolates exactly what yeast and rye content do to bourbon, which is why The Sentinel Room keeps eight Four Roses expressions in the Reserve Whiskey Library, from the flagship Four Roses Bourbon through four recipe-specific Four Roses Bourbon Single Barrel selections. It is one of the more instructive producer runs in the room, and one of the most rewarding to work through slowly.

Visiting the Distillery

Four Roses operates visitor centers at both Kentucky locations: the historic distillery in Lawrenceburg, about 30 minutes from Lexington, and the warehouse and bottling facility in Cox's Creek, about 30 minutes from Louisville. Both welcome walk-in visitors to their gift shops at no charge, with tickets required only for guided tours and tasting experiences.