Category: News

Jack Daniel’s is on a tear lately. Over the last two years, the brand has released some truly killer new bottles of Jack Daniel’s, covering everything from bottled-in-bond masterpieces to American single malt, hazmat bourbon, superb rye whiskeys, blended American whiskeys, and age stated expressions of their classic Old No. 7.

Let’s focus on the latter. Back in November of 2021, Jack Daniel’s shook the American whiskey world with the release of Jack Daniel’s 10-Year-Old, which was so good that it went on to top tons of “best of” lists. Today, Jack Daniel’s released the next volley in their Jack Daniel’s Aged Series: Jack Daniel’s 12-Year-Old (and batch 2 of Jack Daniel’s 10).

Below, I’m going to give you my detailed tasting notes and professional opinion on the brand new Jack Daniel’s 12-Year release (I’ll cover the 10-year batch 2 a bit later). I was lucky enough to taste this whiskey from the barrel in a Jack Daniel’s barrel house in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and from the new bottle at the distillery with Master Distiller Chris Fletcher and Assistant Distiller Lexie Phillips. So let’s cut this preamble short and dive into what’s in the bottle!

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Jack Daniel’s 12-Year-Old Tennessee Whiskey

ABV: 53.5%

Average Price: $80 (MSRP)

The Whiskey:

Jack Daniel’s doesn’t hide any of its processes. The mash at the base of this whiskey is a mix of 80% corn, 12% barley, and 8% rye. Those grains are milled in-house and mixed with cave water pulled from an on-site spring and Jack Daniel’s own yeast and lactobacillus that they also make/cultivate on-site. Once fermented, the mash is distilled twice in huge column stills. The hot spirit is then filtered through 10 feet of sugar maple charcoal that’s also made at the distillery. Finally, the filtered juice is loaded into charred new American oak barrels and left alone in the warehouse. After 12 years, a handful of barrels were ready; so they were batched, barely proofed, and bottled.

The Bottle:

The bottle design is a throwback to the early 1900s when Jack Daniel’s last released age-statement whiskeys. It has a nice heft to it and feels like something you would see behind a bar back in 1910.

Tasting Notes:

Nose: The nose is creamy with deep notes of old boot leather, dark and woody winter spices, black-tea-soaked dates, plum jam with clove, and an underbelly of chewy toffee-laced tobacco.

Palate: That creaminess presents on the palate with a soft sticky toffee pudding drizzled in salted caramel and vanilla sauce next to flakes of salt and a pinch of orange zest over dry Earl Grey tea leaves with a whisper of singed wild sage.

Finish: The end leans into the creamy toffee chewy tobacco with a hint of pear, cherry, and bananas foster over winter spice barks and a deep embracing warmth.

Bottom Line:

This is a great sipping whiskey. It’s deep, creamy, and full of iconic bourbon notes with a nice fruit-forward vibe and a hint of something a little extra (that floral Earl Grey note is very nice). It’s complex and rewarding on every nose and sip. I would easily buy this as a sipper for the weekend or to make one hell of a Manhattan.

How To Buy:

This whiskey is highly allocated (like Batch 1 of Jack Daniel’s 10 in 2021). You’ll find it at high-end liquor stores that do a lot of business with Jack Daniel’s — a good sign that your local liquor might get some is if they have Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel barrel picks behind the glass already. Otherwise, you’re going to see this at high-end whiskey bars and restaurants that get an allocation. State-run liquor stores will have their share and likely have big lines on whichever day they decide to drop this one.

The secondary on Jack Daniel’s 10-year from 2021 is about $500 a bottle, so let that be your guide on this one.

Ranking:

91/100 — This is really good $80 whiskey. There are no faults and it’s truly delicious. You won’t be disappointed.

Boygenius — the supergroup comprised of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker — don’t do things conventionally. The group reformed only a week after Bridgers shared her LP Punisher in 2020. While announcing that their debut full-length The Record was arriving later this month, they also unveiled three lead singles.

So why not pick an odd place to put on a performance? The trio took the stage at baggage claim at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas on Tuesday, March 14. As music lovers piled off planes to get ready for SXSW, they were surprised by the three singers with acoustic guitars. This might be the only scenario in which airport baggage claim is not terrible.

Since the unleashing of “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry,” and “True Blue,” the trio has also unveiled the single and video “Not Strong Enough,” as well as debuted “Cool About It” in a live performance in New York City.

In a Rolling Stone interview, they discussed weird ways in which they’re going to make the tour for the album fun, specifically one idea about Bridgers and Dacus making out during a Baker guitar solo. Bridgers also touched on the subject of how she would like to “normalize talking sh*t about fans.”

The Record is out 3/31 via Interscope. Pre-order it here.

As if being a new parent isn’t hard enough, parents of identical twins have to live with the fear of mixing them up. It’s hard to tell identical twins apart no matter their age, but it can be downright impossible to notice the difference as babies when their features are smaller and less distinguished.

To add to the confusion, parents of newborns are often sleep deprived and stressed because of their new arrivals. So they have to be extra careful not to overfeed one or give the other a double dose of medication.

The stress was so intense for a mother of identical twins that she got law enforcement involved.

Today.com reports that Sofia Rodríguez, 25, of Córdoba, Argentina, recently went viral on Twitter after tweeting in Spanish that she had to take her newborn babies to the police department to fingerprint them so she could tell them apart.

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“Tomorrow I have to go to the police to have my twins fingerprinted so they can tell me which one is which,” Rodríguez tweeted while joking that she “won the ‘Mother of the Year’ award.” Since she posted the tweet on March 1, it’s received over 15 million views.

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She previously had tied a ribbon around one of the baby’s wrists but cut it off and then lost track of their identities after one got sick. At the time, the babies were just 45 days old. “I never thought I would get them confused—Valentin always (wore) a blue ribbon, but when I realized that it was too small for him, I decided to cut it (off),” Rodríguez told Today.

In another tweet, Rodríguez explained that although the babies may look slightly different in the photos she shared, it’s the lighting. “In the photos, they look different, but it is because they come from different angles or the light…sets them apart,” The Daily Mail translated. “In person, they are the same.”

Foto de los gemelos , tienen 45 días pic.twitter.com/wGYVRzGlLR

— Sofi Rodriguez (@sofiar388) March 2, 2023

A few days after having the children fingerprinted, Argentina’s National Registry of Persons helped the mother distinguish the babies from one another.

Rodríguez’s viral tweet received countless responses from those who have dealt with the same problems as a child or parent.

“I painted the toenail of one of mine to differentiate them,” Conz Preti told Rodríguez, according to Google Translate. “Mine are identical, but they are completely different for me.”

Yo le pinte la uña del pie a una de las mias para diferenciarlas. Las mias son idénticas idénticas pero para mi son absolutamente distintas pic.twitter.com/63hY2uyCme

— Conz Preti (@conz) March 2, 2023

“With my twin brother, we used a bracelet, one on the left and one on the right. The myth says that once we both dropped them and they were reversed,” Manuel Rubina wrote according to Google Translate. “We’re almost 30, and maybe I’m him, and he’s me.”

Con mi hermano mellizo usábamos pulsera, uno la izquierda y otro la derecha. El mito dice que una vez se nos cayó a ambos y nos las pusieron invertidas. Tenemos casi 30 años y puede que yo sea él y él sea yo 🤯 pic.twitter.com/xlmNCK8C7g

— Manuel Rubina (@manuelrubina) March 2, 2023

“With this technique, nothing like this would ever happen,” Julian Guarin added, sharing a photo of babies with different shapes shaved in their hair.

Con esta técnica jamás pasaría algo así. pic.twitter.com/LgYyFu8EDN

— Julian Guarin. (@guaroworld) March 2, 2023

As a parent, especially in the early days, you’ve got to do whatever you can to get by. Rodríguez may have jokingly called herself “Mother of the Year” for having to go to the police for help, but that’s just what great parents do. The Instagram-perfect version of parenting is far from reality, and the great ones aren’t those who get by without any spittle on their shoulders or bags under their eyes from sleep deprivation. The best parents are those who do everything they can to do what’s right for their kids, no matter how it looks.

Lana Del Rey is getting ready for the release of her new album Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Ocean Blvd, which has been previewed by the sprawling title track and the seductive single “A&W.” Now she’s back with the opening song, “The Grants.”

“The Grants” is as cinematic as you’d expect from the legendary artist. Featuring a stunning assemblage of gospel singers, the piano-driven ballad has a spiritual texture to it as Del Rey sings: “Do you think about heaven? / Do you think about me?”

Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Ocean Blvd follows Del Rey’s 2021 album Blue Banisters, which she recently said was her way to explain herself after accusations of cultural appropriation and glorifying domestic abuse for the previous LP, Chemtrails Over The Country Club.

“I was just like, ‘Let me try and write an album that maybe could explain why, if that was true, let’s say, I could potentially identify with certain modes of operating,’” she said. “So, Blue Banisters was more of an explanatory album, more of a defensive album, which is why I didn’t promote it, period, at all. I didn’t want anyone to listen to it. I just wanted it to be there in case anyone was ever curious for any information.”

Listen to “The Grants” above.

Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Ocean Blvd is out 3/24 via Interscope and Polydor. You can pre-save it here.

As you might recall, Donald Trump didn’t have a great end to 2022. He’s not having a great 2023 either, what with a possible indictment on the horizon. But at least some of the time he’s back doing what he loves the most: rambling in public about his self-professed greatness and railing against his many enemies. (And sometimes handing out his long-ago-discontinued water.) In fact, if you were to believe one of Fox News’ stars, he should be lauded for clearing one of the lowest bars imaginable.

On Tuesday, Brian Kilmeade took time during that day’s Fox & Friends to praise him for no longer doing one of the things that earned him widespread scorn last November: having dinner with open bigots.

“He also is on a bit of a roll since he went and visited East Palestine, stopped having lunch with White supremacists, and he has gotten a very disciplined message,” Kilmeade gushed. He also bragged that he has a 73% approval rating among those without a college education.

“This is the most disciplined I’ve ever seen him – even compared to 2016,” he went on. “If you see his team, you get text messages every day about policy, not, ‘Such and such is a jerk’ or, ‘This person’s nickname.’ There are policy things coming out. So, it seems very organized.”

Of course, Trump has often received the “new tone” claim before, in which reporters and pundits, even those on the left, praise him for no longer being a schoolyard bully…at least for a brief spell. But being praised for not chowing down with a Hitler-praising white supremacist is a new low. Perhaps the GOP could aim at least slightly higher? Surely there’s plenty of other viable candidates who haven’t dined with a little twerp who thinks “dating women is gay.”

(Via Mediaite)

Quentin Tarantino has famously vowed that he’d only ever direct 10 films. He even seems willing to stick with the idea. But what will it be? Will it be his long-threatened Kill Bill threequel? His also long-threatened Vega brothers movie? Maybe he’d actually get his R-rated Star Trek romp off the ground. But now, sources say he’s decided on his swan song, and it might not be what you think.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the storied but very much not prolific filmmaker is hard at work on a movie called The Movie Critic. Details are predictably thin on the ground, but it’s believed to be “set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center.”

Tarantino loves playing with history, even rewriting it, so it’s possible it could at least be inspired by a real-life female film critic from that era. THR speculates it could be about one of the most famous critics of all time, Pauline Kael, a highly opinionated and combative writer who didn’t write criticism. In the late ‘70s she was coaxed away from her profession, briefly becoming a consultant for Paramount. Or perhaps it could be about another of the era’s female film critics, like Molly Haskell, Judith Crist or Renata Adler.

Everything is still in the early stages, and Tarantino doesn’t even have a home studio for the project. When/if it happens, it will be his big screen follow-up to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, also set around the same time and which defied today’s franchise trend by becoming a semi-surprise smash hit.

It’s not that much of a surprise that Tarantino would want to make a movie about a movie critic. Last year, he released Cinema Speculations, a book of bona fide (and oft-kooky) film criticism, mostly about ’70s cinema. Perhaps that was mere research for the movie he swears will be his last. It’s also worth noting that few directors talk up projects they get around to making quite like Tarantino.

(Via THR)

They say there’s someone for everyone, but what about tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists? If you’re into QAnon or believe the Earth is flat or think Ted Cruz’s dad is the Zodiac killer, does that make it harder to date? If so, then you’re in luck: As per Vice, conspiracy theory dating sites have started cropping up in an era of, as Kellyanne Conway would put it, “alternative facts.”

Alas, so far the only such dating sites are in Europe. One, from Germany, is called schwurbeltreff.de, whose name is a nod to a disparaging German term for conspiracy theorists speaking gibberish. Launched last month, it already has 1,5000 users. And what’s it like over at schwubeltreff?

Alongside the standard dating profile bio questions around height, hobbies and favourite movies, new users of the site are asked to list which conspiracy theories they consider to be real – such as coronavirus, QAnon, New World Order or prepper ideology – and to disclose the number of coronavirus vaccines they’ve taken. New users are also asked to describe where they get their information about current events, and to explain how they think the world will change in the next 20 years.

The site’s creator is Michael Bründel, a prominent German conspiracy theorist who of course is a major player in the nation’s anti-lockdown scene. Here’s some other things worth knowing about him:

Styling himself as “Captain Future,” wearing a trademark yellow cap and eyemask, Bründel has been a fixture at so-called “Freedom Marches” since the start of the pandemic.

The site’s homepage shows Bründel wearing a tinfoil hat connected through a web of electrical sparks to a tinfoil hat-wearing woman, whose laptop is decorated with stickers featuring a UFO, a call to “Free Julian Assange,” and a photo of a plane about to crash into the World Trade Centre.

The pandemic plays a key part in the conspiracy theorist scene, both on schwubeltreff and on another such service from Switzerland, which specifically serves anti-vaxers. Another German site was launched in 2015, and they naturally leaned hard into the pandemic; one Instagram post on the platform’s page reportedly read, “Back then: ‘Jews won’t be served here.’ Now: ‘Unvaccinated are not wanted.’”

For now, though, any American conspiracy theorists will have to make do with the conservative dating app The Right Stuff, which definitely hasn’t attracted a bunch of prankster progressive yuksters making fake accounts.

(Via Vice)

For the second time this offseason a perennial Pro Bowl corner is on the move to a contender in a trade. After Jalen Ramsey got dealt to Miami over the weekend, the Dallas Cowboys have beefed up their secondary opposite Trevon Diggs by sending a compensatory fifth round pick to the Indianapolis Colts for Stephon Gilmore, per Tom Pelissero and others.

As is always the case in NFL trades involving star players, the pick going back to the Colts feels far below the value of Gilmore on the field, but Indianapolis’ motivation in this deal is not to try and replace his production with the return but to simply clear cap space for what one assumes will be a bigger move elsewhere. Considering Indianapolis has a roster imbalance where most of their best players operate on the defensive side of the ball, it’s not a shock they’d move the talented veteran corner, likely with an eye on an offensive upgrade somewhere down the road this offseason.

For Dallas, it’s a seemingly terrific move, as they needed an upgrade opposite Diggs in the secondary and get another very good veteran corner to bolster their pass defense. While Gilmore might not be the same guy that won DPOY in 2019, he’s still got terrific length and physicality, coming off of a season with 66 tackles and a pair of interceptions in Indy, and will present quite the challenge for opposing offenses. Given the Cowboys terrific pass rush, adding another corner who can take advantage of QBs having to get rid of the ball quickly is a big boost and with Diggs on the other side, they figure to be very productive at turning opponents over.

Ever since the tragic accidental shooting on the set of Rust, Hollywood has had to finally start asking the tougher questions about on-set gun safety. Some productions have already found ways to keep things safe. Take the John Wick franchise. Those movies, of course, have a ton of gunplay, and yet no one has gotten hurt or killed making them. That’s because they use “electric guns,” where the sight of gunfire is added in in post via CGI. Why haven’t all productions pivoted to electric guns? John Wick director Chad Stahelski has a theory.

“My feeling is that there’s no reason to have a live firearm on set,” Shahelski told The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview, in which he also talked about taking a break from the series. “We can create cities and spaceships and Godzilla and all these things. We have the technology to do the same with firearms. But, for the last 100 years, Hollywood’s been using real firearms. And for prop houses, armorers or supply houses to switch over, it would make their entire stock of real firearms useless.

“It comes down to the fact that it would cost certain people a great deal of money to switch over,” he speculated. “No one wants to say that, but that’s the real reason. You don’t need firearms. The alternative is just going to cost you more money.”

Stahelski, who was a stuntman before he moved into directing, was good friends with Brandon Lee, perhaps the most famous performer to be killed by an on-set prop gun. (He was in fact his stunt double on The Crow.) He knows what it was like in the pre-electric gun days, when most productions had a less safe way of depicting gunplay.

“Back in the day, when it all started, they came up with blanks,” Stahelski explained. “A blank is a bullet without the projectile, but they couldn’t put you and me in the same shot, 5 feet apart, and one of us pull the trigger. The concussive force coming out at the end of the barrel would be enough to shatter your skull. Accidents like that did happen and people died because of it.”

Then, in the last decade, came electric guns, in which, Stahelski explained, it’s “impossible for anything to come out of the barrel and total CG.” He added, “That technology is out there for everybody.”

Perhaps now everyone in the industry making films where people shoot at each other will listen to the guy who’s directed four films where Keanu Reeves can’t stop shooting people in the head.

(Via THR)

The gang is getting back together! And in this case, “gang” is referring to Texas darlings Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. The duo first starred alongside each other in HBO’s True Detective and will team up for a new series for AppleTV+ with a slightly different tone. Alright Alright Alright!

Schitt’s Creek alum David West Read is developing a currently-untitled series that will follow the two long-time friends as they try to cohabitate on McConaughey’s Texas ranch. While this isn’t the Yellowstone spinoff we were promised...it certainly sounds appealing. If anything, your dad will love it.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The 10-episode series is expected to be a “heartfelt odd couple love story revolving around the strange and beautiful bond between Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Matthew and Woody’s friendship is tested when their combined families attempt to live together on Matthew’s ranch in Texas.” As we all learned from 2020, it can be very hard to successfully live with people you supposedly like!

The series will be produced by the duo alongside David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Matt Thunell of Skydance, Bill Bost, and Jeremy Plager. We can thank Yellowstone for the uptick in ranch popularity, though a McConaughey and Harrelson comedy will probably feature less drama. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be weird.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)