It’s a beautiful fall day in Kentucky, and we pulled up to the Four Roses bottling facility for our first-ever Private Selection barrel pick. In this video, I take you behind the scenes in the private selection room and walk through how the process actually feels when you’re staring down 10 different cask-strength samples. Four Roses makes 10 recipes (two mashbills and five yeasts), and we tasted all 10 blind—no barrel info up front—so we could stay honest and let the whiskey do the talking. After about an hour of blind tasting, we compared notes and started trimming the list. Some samples drank too light, some were minty but basic, and one was an absolute spice bomb—black pepper and heat that just didn’t have the complexity we wanted. The standouts for us were #4 and #8 (with some debate around #10), and we kept coming back to the ones that had real balance: bright fruit, a touch of oak, and enough rye spice to keep it interesting without blowing out the palate. In the end, our democratic process landed on Sample #4 as the winner: an OBSV, Tier 3, about 115 proof, and sitting at 10 years 4 months old on pick day. The crew at Four Roses was awesome, and the barrel we picked was perfection—can’t wait to share these bottles with you.