A Short Trip Through the Bourbon Trail - Four Roses Distillery

Welcome to the second stop in our 'A Short Trip Through the Bourbon Trail' series. This post covers our time at the Four Roses Distillery. To view the entire series and follow along, click here.

After the night spent traveling and visiting the Liquor Barn, we recently made the short trek to Lawrenceburg to the Four Roses Distillery.

Four Roses rick houses and bottling are done at a separate facility so the Lawrenceburg tour covers everything from materials, to distillation, to filling and transporting out the product. The ticket also includes admission to the Warehouse and Bottling Facility Tour at the Cox's Creek, Kentucky location (within 60 days of your tour).

Grounds
Gift Shop
The Tour
Tasting
Summary

Grounds

One of the many unique characteristics that we first noticed is the Spanish architecture with the red roofs that are prevalent within all their buildings.

First building you see upon arriving

Administrative Office

Gift shop, tasting room, and start of the tour

The operations building

Main Distillery

Gift Shop

As you walk in, the first room you to go to to register for the tour is the gift shop. We've been to a fair amount of distilleries, and this gift shop ranks on par with Woodford and Buffalo Trace as one of the best we've seen. 

Great advice

Lots of merchandise

Everything the golfer could need

Miniature pot still

Lil baby coils!

All kinds of bar-ware and plenty of Four Roses options (including some barrel proof options that aren't available in stores)

The Tour

The 60 minute tour begins with a video giving the history of Four Roses and then moves outside to the distillery where they take you through the end-to-end process beginning with milling, mashing, and cooking of the grains. The guide was very informative and made sure to answer all the questions. We were impressed by the access that we had. We got to tour the fermenters and even try the mash. We were also given plenty of time to walk around and truly experience the distillation process. 

The next stop was in the mash room where we got to see the various stages of fermentation. 

Next up was the distillation process

Tasting

The tour ended with a walk to the tasting room where they had a lot of Four Roses historical artifacts displayed and we got to try three variations of their bourbons (bourbon, small batch, and single barrel). Additionally, each tour member gets to keep the glass taster as a souvenir. 

Summary

This was one of the best tours we've experienced and highly recommend. If you get the chance to visit, Four Roses Distillery is located at:

1224 Bonds Mill Road

Lawrenceburg, KY 40342

Tours are available year round. 

Modified tours are offered during the summer months (typically June through August). 

They are closed all Major Holidays and Dec. 19th, 2018.

Written by Mark Roehl