Four Roses Small Batch is one of those bottles I find myself reaching for when someone asks me what a solid, everyday bourbon looks like. At 45% ABV and sitting around the £32 mark, it occupies a sweet spot that a lot of distilleries aim for but few actually nail — genuinely enjoyable neat, versatile enough to mix, and priced so you don't wince when you pour a generous measure.
What makes Four Roses interesting as a distillery is their approach to recipes. They work with ten distinct bourbon recipes — combinations of two mashbills and five proprietary yeast strains — and the Small Batch expression is a mingling of four of those. That layering is the whole point here. You're not getting a single-note bourbon; you're getting something that's been built to have depth and balance from the blending stage. It's a fundamentally different philosophy from a single-barrel release, and for this price bracket, I think it works brilliantly.
At 45%, this sits just above the legal minimum for bourbon bottling and it's a comfortable proof. Not so hot that it demands water, not so gentle that it feels thin. It's a bourbon that wants you to drink it, not study it. I respect that. There's no age statement on the bottle, which in Four Roses' case typically means a blend of bourbons in the five-to-seven-year range. Old enough to have picked up genuine barrel character, young enough to keep that grain-forward brightness that Kentucky straight bourbon does so well.
Tasting Notes
I'm not going to fabricate specific notes here — everyone's palate is different and I'd rather you discover this one on your own terms. What I will say is that the 45% ABV gives this enough body to carry weight without heat, and the multi-recipe blending approach means you should expect a bourbon that's rounder and more complex than its price tag suggests. Four Roses' house style leans toward the floral and fruity side of the bourbon spectrum rather than the heavy caramel-and-oak school, so if that's your preference, you're in good hands.
The Verdict
I've served this behind the bar for years, and it's one of the most reliable recommendations I can make. At £32.25, Four Roses Small Batch punches comfortably above its weight. It's not trying to be a special-occasion whiskey — it's trying to be the bottle you actually finish, and that's a harder thing to get right than most people realise. The multi-recipe blending gives it a complexity that straightforward bourbons at this price often lack, and the 45% ABV is pitched perfectly. If I'm scoring this honestly, 7.7 out of 10 feels right. It loses a point or two because it doesn't quite have the depth or wow factor of bourbons twice its price, but expecting that would be unreasonable. For what it is — a daily-drinker bourbon with genuine craft behind it — this is excellent.
Best Served
This is a natural Old Fashioned bourbon. The balanced profile at 45% means it stands up to a sugar cube and a couple of dashes of Angostura without getting lost, but it doesn't bulldoze the drink with oak or proof the way some barrel-strength options can. Two ounces of Four Roses Small Batch, a barspoon of demerara syrup, two dashes of Angostura, expressed orange peel — that's a genuinely great cocktail for under a fiver. Neat works too, obviously, but if you've got a bottle of this on your shelf and you're not making Old Fashioneds with it, you're leaving money on the table.
