By some accounts, the brand was founded by Rufus Mathewson Rose and was probably named in honor of him, his brother Origen, and their two sons. However, several different stories have been told about the name's origin. Owner Kirin Brewery does not mention Rufus M. Rose in its version of the history, and refers instead to Paul Jones Jr. as the founder of the brand. The company says the brand name was trademarked in 1888 by Jones, who claimed it had been produced and sold as early as the 1860s. The brand's distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, was built in 1910 with Spanish Mission-style architecture, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was originally called the Old Prentice distillery and was owned by J.T.S. Brown. It was designed by Joseph & Joseph Architects, a firm with a history that has spanned more than a century in distillery design. The brand was purchased by Seagram in 1943. Around the end of the 1950s, Seagram discontinued the sale of Four Roses bourbon within the United States in order to focus on sales of blended whiskey, although it introduced other brands of straight bourbons in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Benchmark and Eagle Rare. Four Roses Kentucky straight bourbon marketing was shifted to Europe and Asia, which were rapidly growing markets at the time. In the United States during this period, the Four Roses name was used on a blended whiskey, made mostly of neutral grain spirits and commonly seen as a sub-par brand. Four Roses continued to be unavailable as a straight bourbon in the US market until late 1994, a period of nearly 40 years. In 1999, Four Roses brand ownership passed from Seagram to Vivendi/Universal, then in 2001 to Pernod Ricard and Diageo before being purchased by The Kirin Brewery in 2002. Kirin discontinued the sale of blended whiskey to focus exclusively on Four Roses Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. The brand's master distiller during 1995–2015 was Jim Rutledge, who had started working for Seagram in 1966. The previous master distiller was Ova Haney. Since Rutledge's retirement in 2015, the master distiller has been Brent Elliott, who had worked with Rutledge for the preceding 10 years. Elliot is originally from Owensboro, Kentucky, and has a degree in chemistry from the University of Kentucky. In April 2019, the Four Roses distillery completed a $55 million expansion project that coincided with the official launch of Small Batch Select the first permanent addition to the distillery's bourbon lineup in 12 years. The distillery's expansion project began in 2015 and resulted in the ability to double production capacity. The expansion project invested $34 million into the Four Roses distillery in Lawrenceburg, and $21 million at the Warehouse & Bottling facility in Cox's Creek. At the distillery, Four Roses added two new buildings and equipment, including a new column and doubler still and more fermenters. With the duplicate column and doubler still, production capacity is scheduled to increase from 4 million to 8 million proof gallons, enough to fill more than 130,000 barrels per year. The Louisville-based architecture firm Joseph & Joseph designed the original distillery in 1910, and modeled the new buildings after the existing Spanish mission-style structures.
Products
The company distills ten separate bourbons using two mash recipes and five yeast strains. From combining these ten bourbons, the Four Roses distillery creates their standard bourbon. The single barrel bottlings are made with only one of those ten bourbons. The brand's regular bottlings are:
Four Roses Bourbon: 80 U.S. proof; sold in U.S., Europe and Japan
Four Roses Small Batch: 90 proof; sold in U.S. and Europe
Four Roses Single Barrel: 100 proof; sold in U.S., Europe, and in small volumes in Japan
Four Roses Small Batch Select: 104 proof; aged at least six years; non-chill-filtered; sold in U.S.
Four Roses Black: 80 proof; sold in Japan
Four Roses Super Premium: 86 proof; sold in Japan
The company also produces special limited-production commemorative releases. These are often non-chill-filtered and bottled at barrel proof. The Four Roses distillery has also produced Bulleit Bourbon for the Diageo beverage conglomerate.
