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Bourbon is special. Known as “America’s Native Spirit,” this corn-based whiskey comes with a handful of specific guidelines. To be called a bourbon, its mash bill must be comprised of at least 51 percent corn, it must be distilled at no more than 80 percent alcohol, it must be aged in new, charred, oak barrels, it can enter the barrel at no higher than 62.5 percent alcohol, must be produced in the US, and if it’s aged for less than two years it can’t be called a “straight bourbon.” If it’s aged less than four years, it also must be labeled with the months it was aged.

But one thing you’ll never see mentioned in the official bourbon guidelines is that it must be made in Kentucky. That’s because, while 95 percent of bourbon is produced in the Blue Grass State, it technically can be made anywhere in the US. In fact, there are countless, high-quality, well-crafted bourbons produced in all corners of the sprawling nation.

Below you’ll find some of my personal favorites.

Balcones Texas Blue Corn Bourbon (Texas)

ABV: 64.5%

Price: $79.99

The Story:

Balcones was the first distillery to produce whiskey made from blue corn (there are a few others now). Known for its sweet, rich corn notes, the use of a blue corn varietal makes this a truly unique, Texas-style bourbon that’s complex and full of flavor.

This limited-edition, whiskey is available once a year and is aged in new, charred American oak barrels for between two and three years to mellow out the heat — turning it into a highly sippable whiskey.

Tasting Notes:

Right away, your nose will be met with aromas of sweet corn, cinnamon, peppery spice, and sugary caramel. The first sip yields dried orange peel, cooking spices, sweet cream, rich vanilla, and toffee. The finish is long, warming, and filled with white pepper and brown sugar sweetness.

Bottom Line:

This bourbon is made in limited quantities and can be difficult to find at times. That makes it a truly special bottle that deserves to be slipped slowly on a cool evening.

Wigle Pennsylvania Straight Bourbon (Pennsylvania)

ABV: 46%

Price: $54.99

The Story:

If you’ve never heard of Wigle, now is the time to get on board. This Pennsylvania-based distillery makes a wide array of whiskeys, including its award-winning Wigle Pennsylvania Straight Bourbon. While we don’t know what exactly a “Pennsylvania Bourbon” is, we know this was the first bourbon made in the state in more than 30 years and it’s made with 65 percent Wapsie Valley corn, plus winter wheat, and malted barley before being aged in new, charred American oak barrels for two years.

Tasting Notes:

Since you’ve likely never had a “Pennsylvania Bourbon,” you might want to give this whiskey a good nosing before taking a sip. The first scents you’ll find are sweet corn, creamy vanilla, and honey. The first sip delivers dried cherries, candied orange peels, sweet cream, and butterscotch. The finish isn’t rushed — full of nutty sweetness with just a hint of toasted caramel.

Bottom Line:

This is a great bourbon for fans of sweet corn. It’s sweet, rich, and full of caramel and vanilla — a perfect after dinner sipper.

Wyoming Double Cask Bourbon (Wyoming)

ABV: 50%

Price: $63.99

The Story:

You might not think about Wyoming when you think about bourbon, but the folks at Wyoming Whiskey are doing some really exciting things. Their Double Cask gets its name because it’s first aged for five years in new, charred oak casks before spending a second maturation in Pedro Ximenez sherry butts.

Tasting Notes:

Like all whiskeys that spend time in sherry butts, the initial aroma is sweet sherry along with brown sugar and dried cherries. The first sip drops a cascading symphony of sweet cream, butterscotch, English toffee, and cinnamon notes. The finish is long, warming, and full of subtle Christmas spices.

Bottom Line:

This is a really complex bourbon. With the combination of oak and sherry cask aging, this well-rounded dram is perfect for sipping on the rocks after a long day of work (even if you’re working from home).

Woodinville Straight Bourbon (Washington)

ABV: 45%

Price: $38.99

The Story:

This award-winning small-batch bourbon gets all of its grains (corn, rye, and barley) from Omlin Family Farm in nearby Quincy, Washington. Everything else in the whiskey-making process (mashing, distillation, and barreling) is completed at the distillery itself. Once the whiskey is barreled, it’s shipped over the Cascade Mountains to be aged at the distillery’s barrel houses. Why does it travel so far? Well, the temperature changes in the area are known to aid in the aging process.

Tasting Notes:

After the first nosing you’ll realize you’re in for a unique experience. While the nose isn’t overly heavy in flavor, you’re met with hints of cinnamon, caramel, butterscotch, and dried cherries. The first sip yields subtle hints of charred oak, caramelized sugar, and cooking spices. The finish is mellow, warming, and filled with subtle tobacco, espresso, caramel notes, plus a final flourish of white pepper.

Bottom Line:

This is a classic slow sipping whiskey. It’s small batch, full of vanilla sweetness and should be enjoyed over ice while you watch the leaves slowly see-saw down to earth.

Widow Jane The Vaults (New York)

ABV: 49.5%

Price: $144.99

The Story:

If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on a bottle of Widow Jane: The Vaults, you’re in a for a real flavor experience. This limited release bourbon is made with the company’s “rarest and oldest” bourbons that were hand picked by Widow Jane from its barrel house. It’s a blend of bourbons that are all at least 14 years old and finished in American oak barrels that were air seasoned for 8 full years.

Tasting Notes:

A bourbon of this high-quality deserves a long nosing before tasting. The first scents you’ll be met with are cinnamon, toasted oak, and dried figs. The first sip is effortlessly warming with hints of sweet vanilla, chocolate, and caramelized sugar. The finish is long, warming, and filled with sweet honey, cooking spices, and long lingering final note of vanilla beans.

Bottom Line:

Anything besides simply drinking this bourbon with a single ice cube is unacceptable. You’re already paying $150 for a bottle, you should enjoy every single note.

Belle Meade Cask Strength Reserve Bourbon (Tennessee)

ABV: 54.1%

Price: $67.99

The Story:

Honestly, you can’t go wrong with the brand’s original bourbon. But if you want to kick it up a notch, grab a bottle of its Reserve Bourbon. This offering was made by distillers hand-selecting specific higher proof, richer bourbons — aged between 7 and 11 years. They’re combined in small batches and bottled at high proof.

The result is a subtly spicy, high-rye bourbon perfect for fans of complex whiskeys.

Tasting Notes:

Before you drink, give this whiskey a proper nosing. You’ll be met with hints of cinnamon, brown sugar, caramel, and just a whiff of peppery spice. On the palate, this gem yields dried fruits, candied orange peel, sweet cream, and creamy vanilla, The finish is long, pleasantly warming, and feels like a long fall hug with hints of allspice, toasted oak, and mulled cider.

Bottom Line:

This should be your go-to fall sipper. Instead of making hot cider, pour yourself a glass of Belle Meade Cask Strength Reserve. It will warm you inside and out.

The Atlanta Falcons exist, exclusively, to torture their fans. Their ability to find new and (to those of us on the outside) hilarious ways to lose never ceases to amaze, and on Sunday they put together another legendary collapse in Dallas.

Atlanta couldn’t be stopped early on, aided by some Dallas turnovers, and at one point held a 29-10 lead. Now, Falcons fans more than anyone understand that no lead in the NFL is safe, but the way they managed to blow this one was truly incredible. Atlanta’s offense would score 10 more points, as it wasn’t an offensive meltdown that led to the loss, but suddenly the defense couldn’t get a stop. After a Cowboys touchdown just inside the two minute warning on a Dak Prescott quarterback sneak, Dallas still needed a successful onside kick to have a chance.

The result was one of the funniest things you’ll see in the NFL this year, as they hooked a snaking, rolling kick that for some reason Atlanta refused to pick up, until it barely got 10 yards downfield and the Cowboys managed to fall on it.

Atlanta certainly wasn’t thinking it’d make it 10 yards and didn’t want to touch it and not control it to give Dallas a chance, but even so, with how slow it was moving, to not have a bunch of guys around the ball ready to pounce if it did make it that far is just horrific.

A completion to rookie CeeDee Lamb got the Cowboys down near the 30, and from there they decided to play for a long field goal — which is always a dangerous move — with a pair of inside handoffs to set up a 45 yarder from Greg Zuerlein in the final seconds. The nice thing about having a great kicker is they can make incredibly conservative play-calling look good, and Zuerlein buried the game-winner as time expired to give Dallas a 40-39 win in the most improbable of fashion.

It’s a horrendous loss for the Falcons, who now fall to 0-2 on the season, while the Cowboys avoid that fate themselves with the most improbable of comebacks. When the NFC playoff race is being decided we may very well look back at this game as a very important one, and one the Falcons will kick themselves for.

Miley Cyrus is currently putting the finishing touches on her upcoming album, which is currently titled She Is Miley Cyrus. The pop singer began the rollout for the album with her “Midnight Sky” single, which she released last month. While fans have yet to receive a new single from her upcoming album, Miley has continued to perform covers to get fans excited about her next full-length effort. Adding another one to the list, Miley delivered a passionate performance on Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass” during her recent appearance at the iHeart Radio Music Festival.

Backed by a live band, Miley delivered the performance in a black body suit that sparkled with diamonds that laid around both her neck and wrist. In addition to the Blondie cover, Miley also performed a trio of other songs, which included “Midnight Sky,” “Who Owns My Heart,” and her collab with Mark Ronson, “Nothing Breaks Like A Heart.”

Her cover of Blondie’s track comes after she shared a upbeat cover of Billie Eilish’s “My Future” single as well as a cover of The Beatles’ “Help,” which she performed in an empty Rose Bowl stadium earlier in the summer. Miley’s iHeart Radio Music Festival performance serves as her second in as many months after she performed “Midnight Sky” at the MTV VMAs at the end of August. Watch her cover of “Heart Of Glass” above.

Eddie Murphy was one of the bigger snubs at this year’s Oscars, with many thinking he deserved at least a nomination for raucous Rudy Ray Moore biopic Dolemite is My Name. But there’s one major awards body that knew not to snub him: the Emmys. On Saturday night, Murphy was named Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for hosting SNL last year. And it was amazingly the first time he’d ever won one of their awards.

Murphy’s SNL gig was part of the actor and comic’s comeback, following years of him being largely absent from screens and stages. It was the first time he’d been involved with SNL, where he got his start in the early ’80s, since the show’s 2015 anniversary special, in which he didn’t participate in any of the sketches or do much beyond wave to the audience. Murphy threw himself into the shenanigans with gusto, unearthing classic SNL characters such as Buckwheat, Gumby, and Mr. Robinson, looking like he was having the time of his life. His reward is his first-ever Emmy, and the fifth time he’d been nominated. (Previous ones were for SNL, in 1983 and 1984, and another in 1999 for his animated comedy The PJs.)

Naturally, Murphy could not accept the trophy in person, but he made sure to leave a video speech, posted on the Television Academy’s Twitter account.

“Thank you to everybody at the Emmys,” Murphy said. “Thank you so much for giving me an Emmy. I don’t have an Emmy. This is 40 years since I started Saturday Night Live, this is my first Emmy, so thank you so much. I want to thank Lorne Michaels for putting this whole thing together, and making this happen. And I want to thank, the cast, the writers and the crew at SNL. This was a very, very special thing for me to come back and have the show turn out the way it did. I’m still floating from it. And thank you to everybody for giving me an Emmy.”

The big Emmys show airs Sunday on ABC starting at 8 p.m.

(Via Deadline)

Michael Jordan is a competitor, even when it comes to the Creative Arts Emmys. That means he’s likely celebrating his latest win over the likes of Joe Exotic and Mr. Monopoly on Saturday night.

Emmy weekend is certainly an interesting change from years past, with a pandemic still going on and a much more muted celebration in store this year. Still, one category that was much… wilder than most in recent years was the Creative Arts Emmy for outstanding documentary or nonfiction series. Tiger King, which took life in quarantine by storm this spring, certainly had lots of viral buzz, but it was up against a tough cast of characters, including Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was Jordan who came out on top on Saturday, with the 10-hour The Last Dance chronicling Jordan’s last year with the Chicago Bulls taking the award.

The normally staid category had a higher profile than most years, as it was filled with breakout series. The Last Dance — ESPN’s highest-rated original program ever — won the award over fellow nominees American Masters, Hillary, McMillion$ and Tiger King.

As THR noted, it’s the first Emmy win for ESPN in a documentary or nonfiction category, and the sixth overall for ESPN’s Primetime Emmy trophy case. And it’s certainly a big one against the enthralling Tiger King and hilarious McMillion$, to say the least.

Game 1 of the best-of-five series between the Connecticut Sun and the top-seeded Las Vegas Aces did not go as anyone anticipated, as the Sun blitzed the Aces in a dominant performance behind a career afternoon from point guard Jasmine Thomas.

Thomas, who averaged 10 points per game on the season, erupted for 31 points in just 23 minutes of play against Las Vegas, hitting 13-of-18 attempts from the field, including a 3-for-6 day from three-point range. At one point in the third quarter, Thomas’ 31 points equaled the point total of the entire Aces team in a stunning performance that will leave the top-seed searching for answers.

Jasmine wasn’t the only Thomas to have a big game for the Sun, as Alyssa Thomas went to work on the Aces with 18 points on 8-of-14 shooting in the win.

The Aces defense simply had no answers for the Sun, as Connecticut carved them up in the third quarter to run away with a 87-62 win to make quite the statement in Game 1.

Connecticut as a team hit 50 percent of their field goal attempts to go along with 42.1 percent of their threes, torching the Vegas defense. On the other end, the Aces were stuck in the mud against a physical Sun squad, shooting a dismal 33.8 percent from the field and hit just 1-of-14 three-point attempts. MVP A’ja Wilson had 19 points and nine rebounds, while Jackie Young chipped in 17 points off the bench, but no other Aces were able to reach double figures as they were unable to get much of anything going as a team.

Game 2 on Tuesday night (9 p.m. ET on ESPN2) will offer an opportunity for a bounceback, but the Sun will be feeling very confident coming off three straight wins now in the postseason, looking to carry that momentum to a healthy 2-0 series lead.

The New York Jets might just be the worst team in the NFL. It’s certainly too early to say that emphatically, but their offense has been truly abysmal and the defense has had plenty of lapses as well.

On Sunday, they faced an incredibly banged up San Francisco 49ers team that got more injured as the game wore on, losing Jimmy Garoppolo, Nick Bosa, and Raheem Mostert (on top of already being without George Kittle). The Jets still could only muster a couple of field goals through the late third quarter offensively, and the defense didn’t exactly help matters as they couldn’t even do something as simple as “get off the field on 3rd and 31.”

Yes, the 49ers converted on 3rd and 31 from their own 11 on a 55-yard run by Jerick McKinnon that shouldn’t have had a chance to pick up a first down.

There’s no trickery or anything wild about the play design here. Just a straight toss play that McKinnon cuts back across the field where for some reason there aren’t any defenders on the entire left half of the field capable of cutting him off and stopping him from galloping into Jets territory. It is a microcosm of the season so far for the Jets — who would later in the game kick a field goal after an interception set them up in the red zone. A hapless team seemingly incapable of converting the best of chances into the expected outcome.

While Cardi B continues work on her upcoming sophomore album, the Bronx rapper decided to bringing her two-year-old daughter into the spotlight a bit more thanks to her new Instagram page. Cardi made the announcement about her daughter’s new Instagram with a post to her personal account.

“Follow @Kulturekiari new IG…soo much cool bute baby stuff coming up,” Cardi said in a post which shows her daughter adorably holding a mini Louis Vuitton bag. A quick visit to Kulture’s Instagram page proves that Cardi was indeed right to label it as cute as it presents Kulture hanging with her mom, posing for pictures, and much more.

The launch of Kulture’s new page comes at the end of what’s been a tough week for Cardi. Earlier in the week, reports emerged that the “WAP” rapper filed for divorce from her husband Offset, which she later confirmed during an Instagram livestream.

“The reason for my divorce is not because of none of that sh*t that ever happened before. It’s not because of cheating,” she revealed during the livestream. “I just got tired of f*cking arguing. I got tired of not seeing things eye to eye. When you feel like it’s just not the same anymore, before you actually get cheated on, I’d rather just leave.”

Visit Kulture’s new Instagram page here.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The WNBA playoff semifinal series were both scheduled to tip-off on Sunday afternoon, with the Connecticut Sun and Las Vegas Aces serving as the early game, with the Minnesota Lynx and Seattle Storm set for the late game.

However, just a half hour before tipoff of the Lynx-Storm game, the league announced that they were postponing that game due to inconclusive COVID-19 tests from players out of an abundance of caution, planning to reschedule it for a later date once they can get firm test results back.

It’s the first instance of such test results in either the WNBA or NBA playoffs and provides some insight into how those will be handled, with the players in question going into isolation until they produce negative tests — or a conclusive positive test — and games being postponed rather than making teams play without key players in a playoff series. That latter part wasn’t fully known, but it makes the most sense for how to handle such a situation, as no one would want to have a series swung by an inconclusive test.

Hopefully all subsequent tests will return as negative and the game can go on and be rescheduled soon with both teams having their full rosters available to them.

It was a day of injuries in the NFL on Sunday, as Week 2 saw a number of young star players go down with injuries. Nick Bosa left Niners-Jets with a left knee injury and Saquon Barkley left Giants-Bears with a right knee injury, with both being carted off of the field with serious concern about their status going forward.

In Pittsburgh, promising young starting quarterback Drew Lock also was knocked out of the game after suffering a right shoulder injury on a play in which he got hit and driven into the ground as he stumbled and fumbled the football.

The Broncos announced in the second quarter that Lock’s day was officially done with a shoulder injury — although the specifics of the injury were not yet released. As such, Jeff Driskel took over as the Broncos starting quarterback as he tried to lead Denver back against Pittsburgh, but in the second quarter the already difficult task of being a backup trying to come in and lead the team got much more difficult when star rookie receiver Jerry Jeudy went down with an injury as well.

Jeudy’s status remains uncertain, but the two young stars of the Broncos offense that came into the season with such promise are both injured and the Denver faithful collectively hold their breath in hopes neither will be too severely hurt.

There was good news on the Jeudy front, at least, as he suffered a rib injury and was listed as probable to return.