Four Roses

The Four Roses brand name was trademarked in 1888 by the Paul Jones Company who claimed to have been selling it since the 1860s. At the onset of Prohibition, it purchased and merged itself into the Frankfort Distillery company in 1922 in order to use its medicinal license to continue bottling Four Roses bourbon. It then released, as others also had to, increasingly older-age whiskies from a variety of different distillers.

After the repeal of Prohibition, what had become known as the Frankfort Distilleries Inc offered Four Roses bourbon as a blend of straight whiskies, a trend that continued following its acquisition by the Seagram Company in 1943. The company also introduced cheaper blended whiskies containing some grain neutral spirit. In the 1950s however, Seagram decided to only sell the bourbon in European and Asian export markets, with a 6-year-old known as Four Roses "Yellow" introduced in the 1960s and some non-age statements in the 1980s. The US meanwhile were only offered the blended whiskies, with new products called Premium Blended Whiskey and Premium Light Whiskey launched in the 1970s. This remained the status quo until 1994 when Jim Rutledge became master distiller and was permitted to quietly reintroduce the brand to American liquor store shelves.

The brand was then given a new lease of life by Kirin in 2002 and relaunched as a straight bourbon-only, both domestically and abroad. The brand was given a design overhaul in 2005, sandwiched between the introduction the first Single Barrel releases in 2004, followed by the Small Batch release in 2006. These remain the key to the core range today, alongside the the standard non-age statement bourbon that replaced the classic "Yellow" product in 2018.

Four Roses Distillery
1224 Bonds Mill Road
Lawrenceburg
KY 40342
USA