Four Roses Releases Rare Bourbon Honoring an ‘Essential Water Source’ for the Brand

Four Roses is dropping a bourbon celebrating its annual Salt River Clean Up. (Photo: Four Roses)

Four Roses announced on Tuesday the limited release of a 9-year-old Private Barrel Selection bourbon honoring the whiskey brand’s annual Salt River Clean Up. The bottles will be available in the brand’s Lawrenceburg Visitor Center on October 17 and host a suggested retail price of $99 each.

In a news release from the brand, Four Roses shared the bottle features its beloved OBSK recipe, and it spent 9 years and 6 months aging. Four Roses claims the bourbon is “rich and spicy, with aromas of allspice and delicate pear.” Four Roses expressed that on the palate, a balanced mixture of robust rye and baking spice flavors interplay with soft honey and vanilla. Four Roses expresses the bourbon fades into a long finish.

For the brand’s annual Salt River Clean Up, the distillery employees volunteer to get rid of litter and debris potentially contaminating the Salt River. The spring-fed water runs approximately 150 miles through Kentucky and is rich in limestone.

This year marks the 8th annual Salt River Clean Up, and Four Roses shared it is expanding its efforts to clean in two new locations along the river.

The distillery shared in a blog post from 2020 that it started the Creating Shared Value Committee (CSV) to focus on “environmental friendliness.” The brand claimed for some of its primary initiatives; it wanted to focus on water. The Salt River is unquestionably the most important resource in the bourbon brand’s production process.

“Water is used in just about every step of the distilling process, and the Salt River that flows beside the Distillery in Lawrenceburg is the primary water source that goes into making all our Bourbon products,” said Four Roses Plant Engineer Frank Corea in a statement.

This latest limited release follows the brand’s 2024 Limited Edition Small Batch Bourbon, which dropped in August. The bourbon dazzled critics, and if you want to see what they thought of it, you can take a look at its Raided Score© here.