The Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast episode with Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin is the interview gem that keeps giving. The latest clip making the rounds on social media is Martin’s subtle response to the backlash he received after viewers deemed his wardrobe at this year’s Grammy Award unacceptable. But after a conversation with his friend and hero, actor Woody Harrelson, Martin feels more comfortable with his decision.
“I am happy to feel like I have to wear an outfit if it helps me perform better, but I don’t agree with telling people what they have to wear,” said Martin.
However, when it came to presenting the award for Record Of The Year, Martin opted for a comfort beanie, environmental awareness sweater, and what looked to be dark-wash jeans. Martin says to O’Brien, “Then there’s also this thing of does clothing show respect? And I would never want to show disrespect because I love the Grammys.”
As the pair discussed the annual ceremony’s implied dress code and respectability politics, Martin asks, “what if you’re an axe murderer, but you are dressed correctly? Are you a better groom than Woody Harrelson over here, who loves to, with all of his heart, is wearing board shorts? No, you’re not.”
“I’m going to give a big shout-out to Woody Harrelson because he was at a concert of ours in Oswald. he was so kind to my brother when he had no reason to be that he just became an extra hero in my eyes,” said Martin.
But his love for the actor runs deeper than that, as he shared another interaction Harrelson had with a member of the Martin family, the singer’s dad. “My dad talks to everyone on the crew — he met Woody and asked; he started talking about ‘hey, what you do you do? Do you fold the cables?’” The actor was respectful and showed the same kindness to Martin’s father. “Again, Woody Harrelson was cool as f*ck,” laughed Martin.
Watch the full interview clip above.
Coldplay is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Will there ever be another Star Wars movie? Probably. It’s just a question of when. Thing is, “when” keeps getting pushed back, with one promised production cancelled after another. Earlier this month the Star Wars films by Kevin Feige and Patty Jenkins were revealed to be no more. Now this.
As per Deadline, Damon Lindelof has departed the semi-top secret Star Wars film he’d been working on with co-writer Justin Britt-Gibson. Not much is known about the project, although it’s not dead. It’s retaining its director, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who directed two episodes of Ms. Marvel.
Lindelof’s departure may not be that much of a surprise. In a recent interview with /Film, the co-creator of Lost and The Leftovers and the sole creator of the Watchmen series teased that Star Wars was proving tricky, even for him.
“I will just say, that for reasons that I can’t get into on this Sunday morning, on this day, the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high. If [the film] can’t be great, it shouldn’t exist,” Lindelof said. “That’s all I’ll say, because I have the same association with [Star Wars] as you do, which is, it’s the first movie I saw sitting in my dad’s lap, four years old, May of ’77. I think it’s possible that sometimes when you hold something in such high reverence and esteem, you start to get in the kitchen and you just go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be cooking. Maybe I should just be eating.’ We’ll just leave it at that point.”
And here we are.
Taika Waititi’s Star Wars film, which is also shrouded in mystery, appears to still be a go. But for now, with The Rise of Skywalker now over three years in the past, we live in a world in which Star Wars is something you watch on TV.
The adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” refers to the media’s tendency to headline stories involving death or violence, but it can also be used to point to people’s negativity bias. Simply put, people tend to pay more attention to negative news stories than positive ones.
A new study seems to reinforce this idea. And much to our surprise, it’s centered on headlines used in Upworthy stories.
Using a public archive of Upworthy headlines and traffic data from 2012 to 2015, two separate teams of researchers analyzed whether people’s click tendencies changed with negative or positive words in headlines. In those olden days of Upworthy, a handful of headlines for a single story were tested on the website to see which one would receive the most clicks. The research teams analyzed those results and found that negative words in headlines led to more people clicking on a story (2.3% more), and positive words in headlines led to fewer clicks (1.0% fewer). They also found a preference for headlines that express sadness over those that express joy, fear or anger.
The two research teams submitted their findings to the journal Nature at the same time in a bit of kismet shared here: “Two Research Teams Submitted the Same Paper to Nature – You Won’t BELIEVE What Happens Next!!” (For those outside media industry circles, “You won’t believe what happens next,” is a mocking pseudo-headline that came into use during the past decade and has generally been used to degrade the editorial choices of Upworthy and similarly-minded publishers in the early days of social media news.) The teams ended up combining their results in a joint study whose title sums up its conclusion: “Negativity drives online news consumption.”
While we appreciate the researchers’ work, we’re not convinced that 10-year-old Upworthy headlines and traffic are the most appropriate data to draw such a conclusion from. From our perspective, “negativity drives clicks” isn’t a clear takeaway here due to the fact that 1) the fast-changing media landscape quickly makes data obsolete, 2) the increases and decreases in clicks were quite modest, which matters a lot since 3) a negative word being used in a headline does not automatically equate to “negativity.”
To illustrate these points, let us offer a peek behind the editorial curtain here.
Upworthy gained unprecedented fame in the early 2010s for mastering the “curiosity gap” headline, and for a hot minute, it was incredibly successful. The “Upworthy-style” headline became all the rage and was emulated to some degree by media outlets of all stripes before losing its novelty and falling out of favor somewhere around 2014.
That was a decade ago.
A lot has changed since then, both in media at large and here at Upworthy. “You won’t believe what happens next,” is several proverbial lifetimes of change in the way all media outlets, including Upworthy, approach storytelling and how our audiences engage with that content. Headlines that got people clicking in 2013 wouldn’t be written or clicked on the same way today at all in our experience. So, it feels like conclusions about people’s click habits are being drawn from outdated data (a bit like comparing the respective value of a thrift store TV antenna with optimizing your 4K Netflix stream).
People have pointed out some irony in a seeming preference for negative words and sadness here at Upworthy, a website branded as a “positive news outlet.” However, that’s a simplistic characterization of our content. Upworthy has always shared positive, uplifting stories, to be sure, but it’s an ongoing misconception that Upworthy only covers “positive news.”
The original idea behind Upworthy was to “change what the world pays attention to” by sharing meaningful stories that highlight our common humanity, and that core ideal hasn’t changed. Often, yes, that means telling feel-good stories. But it also means shedding light on and exploring solutions to challenges facing humanity, which aren’t always positive or uplifting. Sometimes it means sharing a viral celebrity story that touches on an important issue or an experience many people can relate to. Sometimes it looks like tapping into people’s curiosity to help us all better understand the world we live in. We tell stories that uplift and stories that deserve to be uplifted, and our headlines reflect that range of storytelling.
So what should we take from an Upworthy headline study that found people were a little more likely to click on headlines with negative words and sadness in them?
Honestly? Not a whole lot.
We already know negativity bias exists. None of this is revelatory to us (except perhaps the finding that anger does not appear to drive more clicks—that one was a bit of a surprise, to be honest). We’ve always known that if we wanted to, we could sell our souls and exploit the crap out of people’s baser tendencies with our headlines to drive cheap clicks and make bank from it. But we don’t, because that’s not who we are.
Upworthy’s current editorial team takes a different approach to headlines than the folks who were here a decade ago. We don’t test multiple headlines anymore to see what clicks. Our process is more organic and intuitive, partly due to our own experience, partly due to lessons learned from our predecessors’ data-driven approach and partly due to appreciating the art of a conscientious-yet-effective headline.
Speaking of which, the term “clickbait” gets thrown around with the Upworthy name a lot, including in the study. We have some thoughts on that, too.
Upworthy pioneered a specific headline style that drove a ton of website traffic and lots of people copied that style because it was effective. But a headline that makes people want to click on a story and read it does not automatically make it “clickbait.” As long as the story itself is solid, a “clicky” headline is simply a good headline. There is no point in writers creating articles for a website if no one clicks and reads them, and a good headline will make people want to click and read. That statement shouldn’t be the least bit controversial.
Genuine clickbait is when a headline promises something that isn’t delivered in the story. It’s a bait and switch, purely to rack up pageviews. That is not and has never been Upworthy’s MO. Of course, we want people to read our stories—we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think what we share was worth reading. But headlines are not articles, and every detail of a story can’t be included in a 90-character headline. Being misled by a headline and clicking into a story that doesn’t deliver is a clickbait problem. Having to actually click on and read an article to get the full story behind a headline is not.
Okay, back to negative words in headlines. Do we ever use them today? Of course, but not for clicks. The top negative words analyzed in the headline study were wrong, bad, awful, hate, war, worst, sick, fight, scary, and hell, and some stories honestly lend themselves to including such words in the headline. And more importantly, a headline with negative words is not necessarily negative.
The researchers point out that they removed headlines that included both positive and negative words to avoid muddying the waters. But searching our website archives from the time period in question for the negative word “wrong,” for example, reveals headlines that are not actually negative (unless you think proving an incorrect assumption wrong is a bad thing).
“The classic image of a farmer is a man. These stunning pics prove that wrong.” (Certainly not a negative story.)
“5 times Jimmy Carter proved the haters wrong” (This one has two negative words, “hate” and “wrong,” but still isn’t actually a negative headline or story.)
“The world tells us there’s something wrong with us if we don’t want to have sex. One chart proves the world wrong.” (The word “wrong” in here twice—still not really a negative headline and definitely not a negative story.)
We could go through countless examples like this, not to prove that negativity bias isn’t a thing (because we know it is) but to show that not all negative-word-including headlines are created equal. There are headlines in the archives that we’d never write today, some of which truly were negative, but many included a “negative” word but weren’t actually negative at all. In light of that and considering the small increase in clicks for headlines containing negative words, we’re not convinced that our archive of decade-old headlines is the best measuring stick to use when determining whether people are more drawn to negativity than positivity in news headlines.
We’re also not convinced it’s a particularly useful question. What we’re most interested in is whether people are drawn to content that highlights our shared humanity, connects people around important causes, brings people together in celebration of joy and helps them learn something fascinating about the world we live in. And sure enough, our audience keeps proving time and again that that’s what keeps them clicking, reading and sharing our stories, regardless of how many “positive” or “negative” words we include in our headlines.
Ever since the release of his debut album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, nearly a decade ago, J. Cole has been smoking sh*t in rap music. However, thanks to his latest confession, that wasn’t the only thing the Dreamville boss was smoking on. During a recent interview with Bob Myers for ESPN’s show Lead By Example, the “Adonis Interlude” musician revealed that at one point earlier in his life, he regularly indulged in smoking cigarettes.
When asked by Myers what was the dumbest thing he’s ever done, the songwriter quickly confessed his past with tobacco. “At 6 years old, I was smoking cigarettes regularly around the neighborhood,” he replied.
Growing up in the rural south, Cole shared that it was far more common than one might believe. “I was always hanging around the older kids in the neighborhood that my older brother was hanging around, and they were smoking,” he shared before adding, “And I was young and fearless and trying to be cool.”
As he reflected on how he could be exposed to something so dangerous so early, he relied, “To them [the kids of the neighborhood], it’s funny. They were 10 years old themselves. So, it’s funny for them. Nobody’s really worried about me. They’re 10 and smoking cigarettes.”
According to the rapper, his nicotine habit was shorted-lived, as his brother and then soon his mother eventually found out. “This is going on for two-three weeks,” he said. Later Cole shared that the look of heartbreak and disappointment on his mother’s face was enough for him to kick the habit.
Many — even Alex Jones! — were understandably on edge last weekend, when Donald Trump repeated something he’d done in the final days of his presidency: He called on his supporters to protest in his name. The last time he did that, the Capitol got stormed. This time he was fuming over his possible looming indictment. Would Tuesday, March 21 be Jan. 6 redux? Luckily it was not to be, and how.
Mary Trump, the niece of the former president and one of his loudest critics, was among those happy to point out that, on Tuesday, not only did almost few MAGA heads turn out to the Manhattan Criminal Court, but those who did were greatly outnumbered by pro-indictment protesters.
How few Trump supporters showed up? As per Politico, in the morning there were only five (5). The numbers grew slightly in the afternoon, which is to say only a few more joined them. There was also a guy dressed as QAnon Shaman riding a bike. (Worth pointing out that Jake Angeli has since turned on Trump and blames him for brainwashing him and landing him in the slammer.)
“Donald called for protests,” Mary Trump taunted over a Newsmax segment on the thin protesting crowds. “Here you go.”
As for the pro-indictment crowd, there weren’t that many of them either — about 20, holding signs like “No one is above the law” and “Alvin Bragg do your job!” But that’s four times what the former most powerful person on the planet was able to draw out.
Trump, incidentally, was not indicted on Tuesday, which is when Trump had predicted. But at least he was able to roil his base enough that they have him, a self-professed rich guy, more of their money. Then again, there’s always another day.
It’s cold and flu seasons, folks. During this time of year, we’re all on a mission to avoid the demon viruses that threaten to invade our bodies and wage Armageddon on our immune systems.
But no matter how much vitamin C we consume or how diligently we wash our hands, we still have to rely on others to be smart about exposing people to their sick germs.
And that goes doubly for kids, who inexplicably do things like lick their own palms and rub communal crayons under their noses.
That’s why a mom’s recent Facebook post about keeping kids home when they have a fever has been shared more than 170,000 times. Samantha Moriá Reynolds shared a photo of a thermometer with a temperature of 101.4 with the following message:
This morning, Sam woke up and noticed her son wasn’t feeling well. Sam took her son’s temperature, and wow! A fever. Sam gave her son Tylenol and then… Sam did NOT send her son to school. Even after the fever went down a couple hours later, Sam did NOT send her son to school. Sam missed work knowing that the well-being of her son and the kids who attend his school is more important than work missed.
Sam’s son was invited to THREE birthday parties over the weekend. Sam’s son has been so excited to go, but he will unfortunately also have to miss them because Sam’s son is SICK. Sam knows passing along a sickness would not be a great birthday gift regardless of how bummed her son may be.
Sam knows her son is still contagious until he is fever-free, WITHOUT medication, for 24 hours. If Sam’s son is running a fever at 7am on Sunday, Sam’s son will also not be attending school on Monday.
Be. Like. Sam.
Some parents will give their kids fever-reducing medication, the fever will go down, the kid will feel a bit better, and off they go to school. But fever meds like Tylenol don’t do anything to kill the virus that’s infecting the kid’s body. They just mask the symptoms of the illness and provide some relief to a miserable kiddo. If a fever goes down with medication, the child is still sick and still contagious.
The same goes for adults who try to tough it out by popping a Dayquil before heading off to work. If you want to infect your coworkers and make them hate you, keep doing that.
Granted, some parents may have a hard time finding childcare or taking time off work, and there’s a lot to be said for employers being understanding and granting leave to care for sick children. Our whole society needs to work together on this front to make sure people don’t feel like they have no choice but to send a sick kid to school. But that starts with parents insisting that their feverish kids stay home from school until they are no longer a threat to other people’s health and well-being.
The coronavirus outbreak keeps making headlines and the mounting death numbers from it are making people nervous, but the truth is that the plain old flu already kills thousands of Americans every single year. This season, more than 8,000 people have already died from flu and flu complications, and we’re still in the thick of the season.
The best way to keep illness from spreading is to stay away from other people when you are sick and to keep sick kids home until they are fever-free for 24 hours.
Be like Sam. Keep sick kids home. It takes a village to keep us all healthy.
Parenting is the most important job that most people will ever have in life. Your decisions as a parent will be some of the most important determining factors in whether your child becomes a happy and productive adult or not. It’s a huge responsibility.
Parenting is a difficult and important undertaking, but many parents simply repeat the same strategies used by their parents. How often do we hear people rationalize their decisions by saying, “That’s what my parents did and I came out ok.”
This approach to raising children negates the fact that with every generation there are countless studies done on child development, many of which run counter to popular parenting wisdom from the past.
Dr. Kristyn Sommer, who has a PhD in child development, has received a lot of attention on social media because of her dedication to teaching “evidence-based parenting.” This expertise has made her an advocate for strategies that run counter to conventional parenting wisdom and have stirred up a bit of controversy.
Here are five TikTok videos where Sommer shares some of her evidence-based parenting strategies.
Three Things I Do Differently as a Mum with a PhD in Child Development
In Dr. Sommer’s first video where she references her degree she admits she refuses to sleep train, co-sleeps with her daughter, and never calls her “naughty” or “bad.” She delves deeper into her thoughts on discipline in the next video.
How To Discipline Your Child So They Actually Learn
Dr. Sommer uses positive reinforcement to discipline her child and as she said in the previous video, avoids the use of terms such as “naughty” or “bad.” If her daughter is doing something wrong she asks her to contemplate whether she’s making a good or a bad decision.
How to Handle Tantrums
Most people tend to think of a tantrum as naughty behavior. However, they are actually a combination of a bunch of little stresses that the child has experienced throughout the day that eventually overwhelm them. Once they hit the tipping point, all of their big feelings bubble up to the surface, resulting in a healthy expression of emotion.
Should You Spank Your Child?
Dr. Sommer is passionately against “spanking, corporal punishment, physical punishment, what ever you want to call it.” She says it needs to stop because it has little effect on behavior and can lead to antisocial tendencies in the future.
She Doesn’t Teach ABCs and 1,2,3s
Dr. Sommer isn’t worried about teaching her child her toddler alphabet or how to count. She says that it “doesn’t really help them with anything” but they should spend that time playing because that’s where they learn best.
Another day, another fascinating peek behind the curtain of the rich and famous. Just when we thought the conversations about nepo babies had finally fizzled out of the conversation, Romy Mars, the daughter of Phoenix’s frontman Thomas Mars and Oscar-Award-winning filmmaker Sofia Coppola, has thrown her hate into the ring.
In a video uploaded and later deleted from her TikTok page, the the young Romy shared that she had been grounded by her parents and confined within the walls of her family’s manor. Why was she being punished? Because, in her words, “I tried to charter a helicopter from New York to Maryland on my dad’s credit card because I wanted to have dinner with my camp friend.”
As if that wasn’t enough to upset her parents, she also shared that her parents’ biggest rule is “I’m not allowed to have any public social media accounts.” Clearly she disregards that rule as well.
Romy did share that her parents had stated their reasons for keeping her off social media. As Romy explained it, “They don’t want me to be a nepotism kid, but TikTok is not gonna make me famous, so it doesn’t really matter.” Before the video was taken down, it garnered thousands of views.
While most Succession stars have been bittersweet about it ending after only four seasons, one cast member seems fine with it: Brian Cox. The legendary actor has said he felt nothing shooting the final scene of the show that made him super-famous, and he’s actually stoked to not have to treat other actors to Logan Roy’s signature catchphrase. That doesn’t mean he’s opposed to the show returning in another form. In fact, he has a not bad idea for a spinoff.
On the red carpet of the show’s splashy Season 4 premiere, The Hollywood Reportercaught up with the big screen’s first Hannibal Lecter, who is usually not above speaking his mind, including being very frank about what he thinks of Jeremy Strong’s curious acting method (which is not exactly Method acting). Cox was actually mostly warm, gushing about how great it was to work with his onscreen oldest biological son.
Cox was also asked about a potential spinoffs, and though he said creator Jesse Armstrong would probably not do one without the original characters, he had one idea. “I suppose Greg really would be the natural spinoff, ‘the life of an idiot’ would be an interesting thing — a tall idiot at that,” he joked.
Sarah Snook had a similar but different idea, one about “Tom and Greg, some sort of half-hour comedy setting up the head office in Vancouver, Canadian outpost.”
Nicholas Braun, aka Cousin Greg himself, chimed in, “You’d have to drop Tom and Greg into some weird world, drop them into the Philippines or something, drop them into some crazy weird micro-business world we never saw in the show. That’s the way.”
On one hand, it’s good, in an age where few shows or films ever come to an actual close, for Succession to end on top (hopefully). On the other, a spinoff with Cousin Greg and maybe also with Tom sounds delightful.
And with all that booze… Look, it can’t all be good. “New” doesn’t always mean something is worthwhile.
So to help you sort through all the new labels and new batches of classic bourbon hitting shelves, I’m pulling 10 brand-new bourbon whiskeys (all of these were just released or the current batch that was just dropped) from my shelves and blind tasting them. Our lineup today features the following bottles:
Michter’s Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey 10 Years Old
Stellum Single Barrel Bourbon Leo Topflight Series By ReserveBar
Jack Daniel’s 10 Years Old Tennessee Whiskey, Batch 2
The ranking for this is very straightforward. This is about what tastes goodright now. It’s really that simple. Luckily, there are a lot of great whiskeys hitting shelves (spoiler alert: all of these whiskeys were pretty damn tasty). Still, when it came to ranking these bourbons, I didn’t hesitate. There were clear winners from the jump so scroll down and find the perfect whiskey to add to your bar cart this spring!
Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months
Nose: There’s a peppery sense of cedar bark and burnt orange next to salted caramel and tart red berries with a moist and spicy sticky toffee pudding with some brandy butter dancing on the nose.
Palate: The palate blends vanilla tobacco with salted dark chocolate-covered marzipan while espresso cream leads to new porch wicker and black peppercorns.
Finish: The end has a pecan waffle vibe with chocolate chips, maple syrup, blackberry jam, and minced meat pies next to old tobacco and cedar with a sweet yet toasted marshmallow on the very end.
Initial Thoughts:
Well, this is going to be hard to beat. This is classic deep Kentucky bourbon that’s delicious.
Taste 2
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: The nose opens with a classic sense of spiced cherry with cinnamon cookies cut with raw brown sugar and vanilla next to a hint of taco seasoning spice packets.
Palate: The palate is lush with a sense of dark creamy chocolate, smoldering marshmallows, honey-dipped Graham crackers, and a light sense of peach tobacco.
Finish: The honey sweetens the finish with a sense of old oak and a dirt cellar floor next to a walnut cake and a mild warming buzz.
Initial Thoughts:
This is pretty damn nice too. It’s not quite as deep as the first sip, but very enjoyable overall.
Taste 3
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: This opens with a sense of unbaked sourdough cinnamon rolls next to Graham Crackers dipped in vanilla-creamed honey served with a warm can of peach soda.
Palate: The palate leans into the fruitiness with a pink taffy vibe that’s countered by slight pepperiness, a touch of “woody,” and more of that creamy honey laced with vanilla.
Finish: The fruity take on a savory essence — think cantaloupe — on the mid-palate before circling back to the pepperiness with a bit of woody spice on the short end.
Initial Thoughts:
This is nice and light. It feels like a solid cocktail base that also works as a sipper, kind of like a classic table whiskey that you don’t have to overthink.
Taste 4
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: This pops on the nose with rich caramel next to soft roasted peach and apricot next to a rush of cinnamon bark and nutmeg with a creamy vibe.
Palate: Toffee drives the palate toward Nutella and honey over buttermilk biscuits with an apple/pear tobacco aura that leads to a soft orange.
Finish: The end is rich and full of stewed fruits — peach, pear, orange, raisins — and a mild sense of oaky spice and a mild graininess.
Initial Thoughts:
This is another one that’s just nice. It’s a tad on the lighter end (and very fruity) but well-built and deep.
Taste 5
Zach Johnston
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.
Initial Thoughts:
This is great-tasting whiskey.
Taste 6
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Leather and spiced cherry drive the nose toward meaty dates and wet brown sugar with a very classic bourbon vibe.
Palate: That brown sugar turns a little molasses-y on the palate as vanilla cream pie drizzled in toffee leans toward spiced milk chocolate powder and a hint of hazelnut cream.
Finish: That creaminess drives the finish toward leathery dried fruits and dates next to a cherry/vanilla/spiced tobacco buzzing warmth.
Initial Thoughts:
This was another nice, classic bourbon.
Taste 7
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Dark oak and leather dance with caramel peanuts and peanut brittle with a good dose of spiced cherries dipped in dark chocolate.
Palate: Rich marzipan leads on the palate with more of that choco-cherry feel next to vanilla-laced whipped cream, nutmeg, clove, red berry fruit leather, and a whisper of fresh and sharp spearmint.
Finish: Brandied cherries with orange peel and clove settle on the finish with a nice sense of buttery salted caramel and creamy nuttiness.
Initial Thoughts:
Again, this is just good. It’s a very bourbon-y bourbon. It doesn’t grab me as fully as pours 5, 2, and 1 but this isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination.
Taste 8
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: This smells rich and lush with deep creamy eggnog next to sweet dark fruit leather, old oak cellars, and a sniff of vanilla cake bespeckled with crumbled-up hard-toffees covered in dark salted chocolate.
Palate: Those toffee chocolate candies drive the palate toward spiced oatmeal cookies with walnuts and raisins dipped in vanilla buttercream and dashed with brown sugar and salt with a fleeting sense of orange and vanilla.
Finish: Spiced cookies with plenty of fatty nuts appear on the finish as a matrix of orchard fruits — cherry, plum, orange — slowly fade toward burnt ends of rock candy dipped in winter spice liqueur with a brazen heat to it.
Initial Thoughts:
F*ck, this is delicious. It’s a tad hot at the end, but I kind of love it. It’s that classic “burn so good” vibe.
Taste 9
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Woody huckleberry jam over raisin scones mingle with eggnog spices and brown sugar cookies, spiced cherry fruit leather, and a twinge of sweet yet old oakiness.
Palate: That dark fruit leather leans into brandy-soaked dates and prunes with a sense of old oak cellars next to rich vanilla, soft apples, and sticky toffee pudding.
Finish: There’s a dark cherry spiced vibe to the finish that leans into fresh chewy tobacco packed into an old oak box and then wrapped in leather with a burnt orange rind and winter spice bouquet on top.
Initial Thoughts:
This is another winner. It just feels classic.
Taste 10
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Nose: This opens with a rich matrix of cherry syrup, apple cores, sticky toffee, vanilla ice cream, and a bold line of wet and sweet oak with a mild earthiness.
Palate: The palate opens up towards the dark fruit but dries it out and marries it to a woody and spicy tobacco leaf alongside toasted cedar soaked in salted caramel paired with dry corn husks that are just singed.
Finish: The finish really takes its time as the cherry attaches to an old cinnamon stick and the tobacco takes on a sticky chewiness with an almost smoked oak woodiness.
Initial Thoughts:
This is sweet and oaky but nicely balanced. It’s a really easy-going sipper for sure.
Castle & Key Distillery is the renovated Old Taylor Distillery outside of Frankfort, Kentucky. This distillery has spent years contract distilling for other brands, until this year when they released their first batch of this expression in April. The juice is a mash of 73% white corn, 17% malted barley, and a scant 10% rye. After four years, 80 or so barrels are chosen for this small-batch expression and proofed down with local water.
Bottom Line:
This is really good, standard bourbon. If you’re looking for a great cocktail base for spring cocktails, get this. It plays well with citrus, Campari, and mint.
9. Green River Kentucky Straight Wheated Bourbon Sour Mash Whiskey — Taste 4
This new release from Bardstown Bourbon Company’s Green River distillery is a wheated classic. The whiskey in the bottle is made from a mash bill (recipe) of 70% Kentucky-grown corn, 21% wheat, and 9% malted 6-Row barley. That whiskey then spends four to six years mellowing before batching, proofing, and bottling as-is.
Bottom Line:
This is another no-brainer if you’re looking for a cocktail base. I’d also argue that this makes a good table whiskey for everyday sipping over a lot of ice too.
This whiskey from out in Washington is a blend of two bourbons with an array of finishings. The blend is a mix of a 75% corn, 21% rye, and 4% malted barley bourbon with a 60% corn, 36% rye, and 4% malted barley bourbon. After several years, those whiskeys were refilled into European oak casks, namely cognac, Olorosso sherry, and Pedro Ximenez sherry casks from anywhere from three to 16 months of finishing before batching and bottling.
Bottom Line:
This is where we get into the easy-sipping bourbons. This is really good but also… sorta felt like a typical $50 bourbon.
First off, this has a great name and reimagined logo (these are the new bottles for 2023). Secondly, the whiskey is made from a mash bill of 75% corn, 21% rye, and 4% malted barley so we know this is MGP distillate, and that usually means high-quality booze.
Bottom Line:
This was a really nice, high-proof bourbon. It had a stone-cold classic flavor profile. If you’re in West Virginia, pick yourself up a bottle.
This new release from 15 STARS is a blend of two bourbons with a big finishing run. The whiskey is made from an eight and 16-year-old blend that was finished in Kentucky in port, cognac, and rum casks for eight additional months before batching and bottling.
Bottom Line:
This is getting pretty close to excellent. I can easily see sipping this on a sunny day next to a smoker or grill in the backyard.
5. Jack Daniel’s 10 Years Old Tennessee Whiskey, Batch 2 — Taste 10
This age statement released from Jack Daniel’s is a throwback to a bygone era in Tennessee Whiskey. The whiskey is aged for at least 10 years before batching. During that time, the barrels spend time in the “Buzzard’s Roost” at the top of the rickhouse. Once they hit the right flavor profile, those barrels are moved to the bottom floors of other warehouses to slow the aging down. Finally, the whiskey is batched, proofed, and bottled.
Bottom Line:
This was an oaky whiskey with a nice fruitiness to balance things out. I’d say if you’re looking for something oaky but more fruity than spiced, then get this.
4. Stellum Single Barrel Bourbon Leo Topflight Series By ReserveBar — Taste 2
This single-barrel pick from Stellum utilizes a classic sourced bourbon with 75% corn, 21% rye, and 4% malted barley from Indiana. Those barrels are transported over the Ohio River to Louisville, Kentucky where they finish their four to six-year-long rest. This release was chosen by the team at ReserveBar and released as a single barrel pick in their Topflight Series.
Bottom Line:
This is a really good sipping bourbon at a great price point. This could easily be $100 and no one would blink an eye. So in that case, get two.
3. Lost Lantern 2023 Single Cask #3 Watershed Distillery Ohio Straight Bourbon Whiskey 7 Years Old — Taste 8
The latest Lost Lantern single barrel release is a five-grain bourbon from our in Ohio. Watershed Distillery used corn, rye, wheat, malted barley, and locally-grown spelt for the mash of this bourbon. The whiskey then spent five years mellowing in Ohio before the barrel was shipped to Vermont for two more years of mellowing. Finally, the team at Lost Lantern thought this one was ready and bottled it as-is only yielding 65 bottles.
Bottom Line:
This is a great whiskey. Great. It was a tad hot on the finish, which is why it’s third instead of first. Otherwise, add some water and let this beauty bloom in the glass and take your time with it. Just hurry, this will be sold out very soon. And then that’s it — forever.
2. Michter’s Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey 10 Years Old — Taste 1
The whiskey barrels sourced for these single-barrel expressions tend to be at least 10 years old with some rumored to be closer to 15 years old (depending on the barrel’s quality, naturally). Either way, the whiskey goes through Michter’s bespoke filtration process before a touch of Kentucky’s iconic soft limestone water is added, bringing the bourbon down to a very crushable 94.4 proof.
Bottom Line:
This had a balance to it that the rest of the whiskeys on this panel just didn’t. This is quintessential and bold Kentucky bourbon from top to bottom and felt like a warm hug from an old friend. Plus, it’s hitting shelves right now, which means you might be able to snag a bottle if you’re savvy.
1. Jack Daniel’s 12-Year-Old Tennessee Whiskey — Taste 5
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.
Bottom Line:
This was the stand-out of the panel. It’s so well-balanced, nuanced, and just freaking tasty. It leaned more into the sweet fruit yeasty flavor notes while still holding onto classic and deep bourbon flavor notes. This is the good stuff, folks, that’s also just hitting shelves and still might be findable.
Part 3 — Final Thoughts on New Spring Bourbons
Zach Johnston
There isn’t a bad bourbon on this list. Seriously, Castle & Key and Green River are excellent mixing whiskeys for cocktails. Don’t sleep on those. Tastes eight through four are all stellar pours. Go back through the tasting notes and find the whiskey that speaks to you and then get it. You won’t be disappointed by any of those.
But, wow, the top three whiskeys were all stone-cold killers. You’ll be in good hands whiskey-wise after grabbing any of those gems.
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