Four Roses 2011 Single Barrel Limited Edition Release Event

I was just thinking of a warm June day a couple of years ago when I was lucky enough to attend an event at Four Roses for the release of their annual limited edition single barrel bourbon.  Master distiller Jim Rutledge spoke about his approach to making bourbon that basically consists of paying attention to quality and not screwing anything up.  He also took questions from those in attendance and when I asked him if he ever thought of trying a bourbon that's finished in another kind of barrel that once contained wine or some other spirit and he answered with an unqualified no that edged toward disgust at the very thought of messing with bourbon's basic formulation.  He did say, in response to another question, that he would love to develop a straight rye whiskey but he didn't think the release would happen in his lifetime.  Well, here's hoping Jim lives a lot longer because he's a great guy and I'd love to sample his rye whiskey effort.

Anyhow, when we got around to tasting the limited edition, I completely forgot it was at barrel strength (somewhere around 120 proof if I remember correctly) and when I took a pretty good slug neat it nearly took my breath away and definitely cleared my sinuses that had been acting up.  There was plenty of heat but, what I really remember is the fascinating rye dominate flavor that seemed to just last forever on the palate.  Their was plenty of complexity of the usual good bourbon flavors like vanilla and char but nothing seemed to be fighting against anything else even though everything was pretty aggressive due to the concentration of the barrel strength and their was definitely a nice woody theme that I just absolutely love in high strength bourbons.

As you can tell, I was smitten and I'm still mad about not picking up a bottle before leaving.  If you have the good fortune of coming across a bottle somewhere and your a hardcore bourbon person I highly recommend you buy it.