A Private Barrel Pick at Four Roses Bourbon Is One of a Kind

Ever get your family in the car for dinner and throw out a few restaurant options? About 15 seconds pass before an argument starts because nobody likes anyone’s choices. Soon, you’re side-eying drive-thru options and threatening to feed them all microwave popcorn and water.

Given the ever-risky context of choice, it’s nearly miraculous that a Four Roses Bourbon Private Barrel pick doesn’t result in fisticuffs. Like the slogan says, the brand creates “Mellow Moments,” I guess. At the distillery’s bottling plant in Cox’s Creek, Ky., pickers get 10 recipes (in separate barrels) from which to choose just one. 

“Oh, we’ve had people argue about it for sure,” Mandy Vance, manager of the Private Barrel Selection process at Four Roses, told me a few years ago about a pick. They generally work it out, though, because they’re having fun.”

It is a lot of fun. Several Four Roses picks I’ve been on included hilarious debates between opinionated drinkers angling for their favorite choices. Faux shaming your friends’ choices is just part of the experience, and with 10 options, there’s no shortage of “Really? You like that one!?!” remarks.

If you’re unfamiliar with Four Roses’ 10 recipes, click here to read the nerdy deets, or just know that there are five mash bills and two unique yeasts, which, when multiplied gives you 10 recipes. All are distinct bourbon recipes and all bear Four Roses’ house style while remaining incredibly unique.

Pickers sniff and sip 10 amazing bourbons without knowledge of age, recipe or proof. Ten samples to choose from is 3x +1 the number of options offered at some barrel picks, but four samples are also common. If you’re with experienced pickers, halving four options to two happens quickly, and any debate over finalists is generally short.

But it’s never that simple or quick with 10 choices. On a pick for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival that I and five friends did in late June, just thieving whiskey from 10 barrels into 70 glasses took at least 15 minutes. It didn’t take too long to knock out four recipes, but a struggle set in over cutting the remaining six to two. Amusingly, when we announced our first cuts, Brent Elliott, Four Roses’ master distiller, said we’d already kicked out two of his favorites. How ‘bout that? Sometimes, even the most knowledgeable palate in the room gets voted down.

My favorite immediately was recipe 10, a 10-year-old OBSO others liked. As the jabbing and shaming began, we bumped out two more, including my second favorite. Eventually, it was down to barrels 2, 4 and 10 before the numb-tongue haters nixed 10. Four, a 9-year-old barrel of OBSV, won a blind tasting, which saw at least two people defect from their preferred recipe 2. Personally, I think defections are humbling and fun. You learn that blind tasting allows a crucial few minutes’ break from sipping one you like and can open your palate to something else.

According to Vance, Four Roses does 1,300 private barrel picks a year, two-thirds of which happen at Cox’s Creek (an average of three per day), and one-third happen remotely with couriered samples.

“Sometimes to work it into someone’s schedule we start really early—7:30 a.m. one time,” Vance said. “But mostly it’s closer to 10, which some people still think is early for bourbon drinking.”

If you ever get a chance to do a Four Roses Private Barrel pick, don’t miss it. There’s no other pick quite like it.