Four Gate Whiskey Company: Release 2, Outer Loop Orbit

I’d like to thank Four Gate Whiskey Company for providing a review sample with no strings attached.

Hey everyone! My tastebuds are back! And just as importantly, so are my wife’s. And since we put off tonight’s tasting until the very last minute in order to allow us both maximum time to recover, I decided to spring an interesting one on her to celebrate our newly recovered tastebuds.

That’s right, unlike normal, you are getting the raw unfiltered impressions of this one with no time to think about it in between tasting and writing. Of course, that also means that I didn’t really have a lot of time to come up with an intro so…cut me a little slack on that front. Ok?

Great.

So I first became aware of Four Gate Whiskey Company on social media. It turns out one of the folks involved and I followed each other. And so he reached out to me to see if I would like a sample of their batch 1. Unfortunately for him, he asked on twitter just after I essentially left the platform as an active user and I never saw the message he sent to me until about a month later. I apologized and told him to keep me in mind for the future.

Fast forward a few months and all of a sudden a sample that I wasn’t expecting showed up. And this one sounded super interesting, though maybe a little scary. It was a bourbon that was finished in a barrel that had originally held Orange Curaçao and then held gin. Here’s what the distillery has to say:

When we met at Kelvin Cooperage to discuss our second batch, William Hornaday told us about some very interesting barrels in his warehouse that he wanted us to check out. Originally Orange Curaçao barrels, a local distiller then used them to finish a batch of gin. That’s right, gin. We had no idea what to expect, but when we smelled these barrels, they blew us away. The sticky sweetness of Orange Curaçao was tamed somewhat by the sharpness of the botanical gin, creating an aroma that smelled straight out of the 80s and harkened to a rather popular powdered orange drink made famous on the 1962 Mercury Mission when astronaut John Glenn took it to outer space. The tangy-orange notes of the barrels were screaming out for bourbon, and we listened.

Four Gate Whiskey Company: Release 2, Outer Loop Orbit

Purchase Info: This sample was graciously provided for review purposes by the distillery. It was available for purchase in Kentucky and Tennessee starting in September for a suggested retail price of $199.99 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price Per Drink (50ml): $13.33

Details: Blend of 5-year bourbon (mash bill: 78% Corn, 10% Rye, 12% Malted Barley) and 12-year bourbon (mash bill: 74% Corn, 18% Rye, 8% Malted Barley). Non-chill filtered. Finished in a cask that previously held Orange Curaçao and then Gin. 60.15% ABV.

Nose: spearmint, orange, almond, pine, and caramel undertones.

Mouth: Pine, orange, almond, baking spice

Finish: warm and medium/long. Lingering notes of almond, cinnamon, and pine-

Thoughts: Goodness, this is weird! Initially, the orange and gin notes overwhelm the nose and palate. After subsequent sips, more bourbon notes appear providing a little more balance.

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I’m of two minds about this one. (I told you that you were getting real-time thoughts on this one.) First I’ll say that this is a certainly a drink for the adventurous bourbon drinker. Traditionalists need not apply. And even so, maybe try this one in a bar if you see it before you commit to a bottle. When I first tasted this in a Glencairn, I really didn’t like it. It just didn’t seem to come together for me. But once I poured it into one of the small rocks glasses that I would usually use to drink bourbon, I didn’t mind it at all. It almost reminded me of the herbal notes that an MGP 95% Rye would get. Not exactly, but reminiscent. As I said, I’m of two minds. I’ve had two separate 1 ounce pours tonight and I still can’t decide if I like it or not. I think I’m going to throw this down as a meh as there is nothing wrong with it, but based on tonight’s experience I don’t think it is for me. That said, I really applaud the experimentation and if you are an adventurous bourbon drinker, it is certainly worth a try as it is super interesting.

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MB Roland Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey

Paul and Merry Beth of MB Roland are my friends. Because I might be biased, I have decided to disclose that bias so that you can decide how much to trust the review.

It had been five years since I last visited my friends Paul and Merry Beth at their distillery. We’d met up in Bardstown a few times during the Kentucky Bourbon Festival where we hung out and had a lot of conversations (and on a few occasions a lot of drinks). But it had been too long since I went to visit them at their place. I was excited to see what had changed and learn about how things were going.

I met Paul and Merry Beth just as I was starting to explore distilled spirits. I hadn’t even started my bourbon journey yet as I was still playing with cocktails using inexpensive clear spirits. I was more interested in the flavors you could add to alcohol and how they worked together at that point than I was those flavors that were already there. As an example, I had a small refrigerator filled with tinctures (infused vodkas) of everything from fruit and fruit peels to herbs to spices. I even had a black pepper tincture at one point.

It was in this setting that I tasted my first bottle of whiskey. Not drank my first bottle, tasted. I mean, I did go to college after all. The flavors were amazing. And yes it was from MB Roland. Sure, it was a young whiskey, but I didn’t know better. I was just amazed that you could get all this flavor from a barrel. At that point I determined that I was extremely interested in whiskey. (In fact, it wasn’t until I started making my own house-made bitters for my whiskey cocktails that I remembered my interest in the flavors you could add to a spirit and that helped rekindle my love of cocktails.)

So since I made the trip to visit them, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to grab a few of their products that had come out since the last time I’d been down there. And there were a lot. The first one I opened was a straight wheat whiskey. Since I am taking the time to review it, you already know that I like it, but I should probably share my notes as well.

MB Roland Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey

Purchase Price: $54.99 for a 750 mL bottle at the distillery gift shop.

Details: Mashbill: 69% red winter wheat, 26% white corn, 5% malt. Barrel: New with a #4 char level. Batch 5, 55.8% ABV.

Nose: Clean hay, cooked cereal

Mouth: Cinnamon, Milky Way candy bar (milk chocolate, caramel, and nougat)

Finish: Medium length and heat. Lingering cinnamon and Milky Ways.

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Thoughts: I really like this one. The Milky Way candy bar notes make this just like liquid candy. As to be expected with a two-year-old whiskey this does have a few "young" notes but they are mostly on the nose and tend to be pushed into the background of the mouth and finish by the high proof.

Lux Row Double Barrel Bourbon

I’d like to thank Common Ground PR and Luxco for providing a review sample to me with no strings attached.

It was a the week before I was scheduled to drive to Kentucky for my annual shopping trip disguised as a Festival when I received a press release about a new bourbon out of Lux Row Distillery in Bardstown, Ky. It was to be a twelve-year-old, cask-strength bourbon and it was being released to celebrate the one year anniversary of the official opening of the Lux Row Distillery.

Sometimes you just get a feeling that a bourbon is going to be good. And a double digit age statement and a cask strength proof is a good start when looking at a bourbon’s spec sheet. So, because I’ve had a very high opinion of high-end Luxco bourbons lately, I decided to reach out and see if there were going to be samples available. Of course I also added a bottle to my “Kentucky Shopping List” just on the off chance that I happened across one. And then I promptly forgot about all of it because my active memory really only has space for about three things in it at any one time.

This has nothing to do with getting old. Shut up.

So, I was killing time in Bardstown between KBF events when I decided to stop in to the Lux Row Distillery gift shop. Honestly, I was on the lookout for a bottle of Old Ezra Barrel Proof and was hoping that if anybody had one, it would be them. When we got there, I also remembered the new bourbon that they were putting out. Mostly because it was sitting there right on the shelf, looking oh so pretty.

So I bought both. Yes. I blasted through my personal price ceiling without a second thought. Sometimes you just get a feeling that a bourbon’s going to be good.

Lux Row Double Barrel Bourbon

Purchase Info: $150 for a 750 mL bottle at the Lux Row Distillery. I also received a 200mL review sample (because I forgot to tell them that I’d purchased one until I saw the FedEx notification that it was on it’s way).

Details: 59.2% ABV. 12-year-old bourbon. Batched from 2 barrels (numbers 5154523 and 5154524)

Nose: Brown Sugar, cinnamon, clove, anise, and oak

Mouth: Cinnamon red hots, leather from a well-worn baseball glove, cherry, and caramel

Finish: Warm and long. Lingering chocolate, cherry, baking spices and leather.

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Thoughts: Very warm and spicy. The cherry notes play nicely off of the leather and spices. This is a delicious Bourbon. Very rich. I'm very happy I picked up a bottle while I was in Kentucky. For $150 though, this will go on the special shelf where I am less likely to empty it quite so fast.

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A Visit to Castle and Key Distillery

If I may, I’d like to share with you my visit to the Castle and Key Distillery, located outside Frankfort Kentucky. Castle and Key is located about seven minutes past Woodford Reserve on McCracken Pike in the Historic Old Taylor Distillery. Much like their neighbor, Glenn’s Creek Distillery (located in the ruins of the Historic Old Crow Distillery about two minutes further down the road), Castle and Key is a craft distillery working to revitalize a historic property which had been abandoned by Jim Beam after they bought National Distillers in the 1980s.

In this case, the property was designed to be a showpiece of a distillery. Long before distillery tours were a form of tourism, Col. E.H. Taylor was bringing people to his castle-shaped distillery via train to show off what he had made. I’m guessing that he wanted to build his distillery into a work of art to impress upon people the value of the product that the distillery was making. It is a lesson that has been learned by many of the new distilleries that have popped up in recent years.

So not only was Col. Taylor the father of Bottled in Bond, but also of Bourbon Tourism. Let’s take a look at what is left today after the original distillery was bought and expanded by National Distillers, bought and abandoned by Jim Beam, and left to scrappers and the elements for thirty years before being purchased by the current occupants.

Upon entering the gate to the property, you immediately walk past the iconic castle. Inside the doorway is the distillery proper. There is a helpful gate guard to let you know that the gift shop where you report for your tour is not through that doorway, but past the castle, down the path and around the corner.

It is interesting to think that this property was in such bad shape that the current occupants purchased it for less than one million dollars. Of course, it took many more millions of dollars to remove the asbestos and trees from the buildings, excavate the property from flood debris and restore the buildings to the point that people could be in them.

Around the corner of the castle is a plaza that fronts the old boiler room (now the gift shop) and the old passenger train station (now the restrooms and the place you can purchase your cocktails). These are the public portions of the distillery. You can sit by the springhouse, walk down the botanical trail and enjoy a cocktail from Taylorton Station.

Of course, the other thing that the plaza leads to is the spring house. I’m sure you’ve all seen images of the spring house, even from before the renovations. This is as pretty as the photos lead one to believe. It is shaped like a keyhole and is one of the original springs on the property. According to our wonderful tour guide, you could empty it of water and allow it to refill twice per day should you want to.

Now you might think that Castle and Key, being a craft distillery, would be a small operation. The original owners thought that might be the case as well until they realized that all the original fermentation tanks could be easily cleaned and upgraded and reused. Each of the tanks holds over 11,000 gallons of fermenting mash and I saw a sign that called one of the tanks “No. 14.” As you might have guessed, all of a sudden this place had a different business model.

One side effect of all those fermenters is needing a much larger still, seen here. It comes from Vendome Copper & Brass and is quite large.

One of the interesting bits of trivia that our tour guide left us with was that, although everyone knew that Col. Taylor had two formal gardens on the property, no one knew where they were. It wasn’t until they were excavating in this area that they ran into something hard and realized they were on top of one of them.

While we were learning about the gin basket in the distillery a worker, who happened to be doing quality control, offered us a taste of the bourbon new make that was coming off the still. It was quite good, for new make. It was fun then that we got to see the same new make entered into barrels as we wandered past. One of the tour got the chance to pound in one of the bungs for them. He seemed quite happy with the opportunity.

Past the barreling house is a building that has fallen down. They used the foundations of the building to create gardens which they use to grow the botanicals of the gin they produce (more on that later in the week). In the distance is the longest aging warehouse in Kentucky. It is currently full of aging product that they have made.

Of course, no bourbon distillery tour would be complete without a tasting at the end. Unfortunately, all the bourbon they have is still currently aging in the warehouse shown above. So they made us cocktails using their vodka and their gin. Let’s put it this way, I was impressed enough with the cocktail to buy a bottle of each of their gins. We will talk about those on Thursday.

BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products and bourbon-related craft supplies I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. And hey, if you are an iOS user, look for Bourbon Guy in Apple News. Thanks!