With just four stools, it’s safe to say that a seat at John Fitzpatrick’s bar at Warren Delray is the most exclusive spot in town.
“That’s my office, basically,” says Fitzpatrick, or Fitzy, as he’s known, gesturing at the rustic bar behind which wooden shelves stretch the height and width of the wall, their familiar and obscure whiskeys lined as neatly as library tomes. “Two times a night, I host four people for dinner and for our whiskey experience.”
Connoisseurs from across the country make their pilgrimage to the whiskey mecca of Warren, which houses the largest collection of whiskeys (and whiskies; it depends on where it was made) in Florida and was recognized as being one of the best whiskey bars in the nation by Whiskey Advocate. As “spiritual advisor,” Fitzy dispenses pours from the collection of more than 1,200 bottles for the private tastings. No two experiences at Warren are alike, with Fitzy tailoring each tasting to the palates of whomever he’s serving.
“My goal as spiritual advisor is to have them leave with maybe a few new favorites they’ve never heard of before,” he says.
Fitzy’s title of spiritual advisor came to him when he realized that there’s no whiskey equivalent to wine sommeliers. As someone who can identify a whiskey’s taste just by knowing the age and mash bill, Fitzy comes by the designation honestly.
“Over the last 20 years, I’ve probably dropped about tens of thousands of whiskeys on people and had the chance to gauge how they respond to different flavors and different combinations of flavors,” he says.
From this well of information, Fitzy created a “hit list” of flavors that have emerged as favorites among his eclectic tasters. This flavor hit list forms the foundation of Fitzy’s recipe for his new venture, Fitzy’s Four Barrel, made up of a blend of whiskeys hand-picked (and tasted) by Fitzy himself. “This is what I think is a perfect match of different whiskeys,” he says.
As the name implies, the whiskey will be as exclusive as a seat at his bar, with only four barrels produced. The symmetry, he says, was unintentional. “The smaller the batch, the more control you can have over it,” he says. “If you only have four barrels, you can really nail down the exact flavor combination you’re looking for.”
Whiskey blends have become more popular as the cost barrier to distilling has increased. “I don’t have to spend $5 million and open a distillery to make whiskey,” Fitzy says. “There’s a lot of barrels available, and blending has become a huge part of our industry”—the most famous being Johnnie Walker, Dewar’s, and Chivas Regal.
Fitzy’s secret recipe has been tweaked to perfection, incorporating the sweetness, spiciness, toastiness, and smoothness of different batches until it passed his rigorous taste test. The first run of barrels will produce between 700 and 800 bottles, and Fitzy already has the market cornered.
“My goal is to focus on my foothold, where I’ve been for the last 25 years [in] Broward and Palm Beach, and to take advantage of the friendships I’ve built over the years,” says Fitzy. “I have dozens of friends who either own restaurants or bars or they’re buyers for their establishments, who’ve already verbally said, ‘Yeah, as soon as you’re ready, we’re totally carrying it.’”
Fitzy expects his four barrel blend to hit the shelves this summer. For him, the brand represents the culmination of all he’s learned from decades of serving and sampling brown spirits.
“This project is kind of a natural progression of teaching for so long, understanding and studying whiskey, studying whiskey history, studying flavor combinations,” he says. “So I think that’s what puts me in a good position to succeed.
This story is from the Summer 2026 issue of Delray magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
