Four Roses Mariage Collection 2009 Edition
As time passes and my taste in bourbon evolves, I find myself increasingly attracted to wheated bourbons. The Weller Antique Collection and Pappy Van Winkle 15, are two of my favorites, possessing such smooth grace and beguiling personality in the glass. All the same, each time I taste Four Roses bourbon I’m surprised at the complexity this whiskey has. Not because I don’t expect it, I know this is top-shelf whiskey. But because I forget just how articulate and curious it is, how each sip reveals a new flavor or a different nuance.
Four Roses employs two different mashbills and five different yeasts to achieve this complexity. Their mashbills both have unusually high percentages of rye in them, one with 20% rye (code OE), the other 35% (code OB). The yeasts, identified by codes, all impart unique flavors to the whisky:
- V – Delicate fruity flavor
- K – Slight spicy character
- O – Robust fruitiness
- Q – Floral essence
- F – Light herbal essence
In turn, they age all of their whiskey in single-story warehouses, in order to ensure that all of the barrels develop evenly. Because they have up to 10 different recipes to call on when blending their whiskeys, they don’t need to use multi-story warehouses as other distilleries do.
Best of all, the range of bottlings that they release explicitly highlights the uniqueness of their production methods. The Small Batch includes four different recipes, the Single Barrel contains one (the OBSV), and then they have occasional special releases. The past couple of years they’ve released a unique, cask-strength single barrel bottling that uses a different recipe than the regular Single Barrel. The Mariage Collection is always a blend of two or three different recipes, and was first released in 2008. Both that year’s and this one’s are a blend of different recipes.
The 2009 Mariage Collection is a blend of 3 casks:
- 10-year OBSK (high-rye, “slightly spicy character” yeast)
- 19-year OBSK
- 10-year OESO (low-rye, “robust fruitiness” yeast).
It’s bottled at cask strength, 54.8% in this case. I’m tasting bottle 709 of 3432.
Tasting Notes
The whiskey is bronze-to-light copper in color. The nose has notes of vanilla wafers, honey, resin, and citrus. The palate is rich and spicy, with layers of caramel, nougat, candied orange peels, and ripe fruit. The texture is smooth, velvety, and lively owing to the higher percentage. A dash of water mellows things out nicely, lending a fuller mouthfeel to the whisky. The finish is warming, sweet, and lingering, with flavors of oak, honey, and orange.
This is a wonderful bourbon. The spices and citrus provide some real zest to what is an otherwise lush, layered, and mellow whisky, highly drinkable. In contrast to their single barrel, this has more sweet, mellow notes, and less of an emphasis on the oak and citrus that is such a hallmark of the single barrel. Easily my favorite Four Roses so far! Be sure to grab a bottle of this if you see it. And if you see the 2008 version, grab a bottle and send it to me! I’m aching to compare the two against one another!!
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