Hello, Alex Martin here. It’s been a while. Almost three months, in fact, in which time our newsletter audience has almost doubled. So, for those who don’t know me, I am the founding editor of The World of Fine Spirits. In the coming weeks, we’ll launch our website and ring in a new era of spirits journalism. Until then, we’ll continue to bring our best stories directly to your inbox.
This week, we're talking about Jarrod Scott, a male model launching a ready-to-drink cocktail brand. When I was first invited to speak to him, I assumed it was just another celebrity venture. But look at his Instagram bio, and you won't see any references to what has obviously been a very successful modelling career. Instead, he describes himself as a “global award-winning mixologist”.
It turns out Scott is not just the face of this new brand, but also its chief mixologist, creative director, and lead investor. It has taken five years, and, one assumes, a lot of cash, to get it to market. Behind Jarrod's strong jaw and chiseled abs is a man not just passionate but obsessed with flavor. He speaks with a level of knowledge not dissimilar to that of a master blender or an award-winning mixologist.
Needless to say, I accepted the invite.
The Supermodel Who’d Rather be Mixing Drinks
On the eve of Paris Fashion Week, Jarrod Scott is preparing for the usual chaos of photoshoots and runway shows. It’s a routine he’s well versed in, having worked at the top of the modelling industry for more than a decade, fronting campaigns for Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Chanel.
Yet when we meet over a video call, I get the feeling his modelling career is at the back of his mind. Instead, our conversation turns to harvesting seaweed, tracking down rare eucalyptus and the differences between rose and jasmine when they hit the tongue.
For the past five years, Scott has been building something very different from a fashion career. Goldenbird, his ready to drink cocktail brand, is not just another celebrity backed venture. Scott is its founder, creative director and sole recipe developer.
Back home in Australia, Scott’s obsession with flavor goes back to his childhood. “I was raised in a really poor family, just with my mum in the countryside of Melbourne,” he says. “Money was non-existent, and food was not great, so I started making things for myself. I wanted tasty food, so I’d constantly be out picking things, smelling things. It became an obsession.
“In summer, I'd spend days foraging native botanicals, flowers, and seasonal produce. I’d supply restaurants with Mirabell plums, strawberry eucalyptus, sea blight, samphire, seaweeds, all kinds of things. I had a lot of time to think about how I could utilize those ingredients and I'd go home and start tinkering around with them, whether in cooking or making drinks.”
Today, Scott’s tinkering happens on a larger scale. At various points, his garage has been packed with drying eucalyptus, jars of botanical extractions and the occasional unwelcome spider colony. His fridge currently holds around 70 macerations and experiments, and the family car has been relegated to the roadside.
Goldenbird's bottle design is inspired by fragrances
When his interest in flavor combinations grew beyond experimentation, his first stop wasn’t cocktails, but Scotch whisky. He drew up a business plan and sent his partner, Brioney Prier, to Scotland to meet with master distillers, but nothing stuck.
“We wanted to make whisky more fun and enjoyable,” he says. “But whisky is a long game. It takes a long time to make a small amount of money We were always going out and drinking cocktails anyway, so we asked, why aren’t we just doing cocktails?”
Scott’s journey eventually came full circle in Grasse, the perfume capital of southern France. There, he found Comte de Grasse, a self-described “liquor tech” company that was distilling spirits using techniques borrowed from fragrance extraction.
Prier, Goldenbird’s co-founder, recalls their first meeting with the team. “We didn’t want a cookie cutter product from a contract bottler,” she says. “We wanted something that really spoke to craftsmanship. When we met the team in Grasse it just hit the nail on the head.”
That team includes master distiller Marie-Anne Contamin, a woman with decades of experience in sensory development. When Scott first arrived with bags of foraged delicacies and 60 recipe concepts, she encountered ingredients she had never worked with before. “It was a really meeting of minds,” Prier says. The way Jarrod layers his recipes with flavor is exactly how perfumes are constructed.”
Brioney Prier (left) and Scott, co-founders of Goldenbird
Of all his original recipe concepts, Romance Apocalypse sits closest to Scott’s heart. The website describes it as a “sexy bouquet of French lavender, damask rose and Egyptian jasmine combined with fruity acidic hints of strawberry eucalyptus”. It’s vibrant pink color, shimmering through the fragrance inspired bottle, would not look out of place on a perfume counter.
“I love floral drinks,” he says, “and I wanted to create something that was like getting slapped in the face by a bunch of flowers. Usually, when you get a floral drink, it only uses one flower, because they're such intense flavors. Rose hits you straight away on the nose. Jasmine has more of a honey note. Then you’ve got lavender, which is earthy and floral.”
Scott worked on the balance drop by drop. It took 160 variations, and then a few more on top of that. The result is a drink that unfolds in layers, much like a fragrance. Even the color comes entirely from flower extracts.
By the end of development, Scott was so attuned to the recipe that he could detect even the slightest misalignment. One of the first batches from Comte de Grasse had used the wrong type of coconut water. Scott picked it up instantly. “I just knew it was wrong,” he says. “They had used a brand of coconut water that had 5.5 grams less sugar, and I just knew it didn't taste right.”
Scott finalized a dozen recipes with Comte de Grasse, but Goldenbird was still a long way from launch. It still needed a website, and licenses to sell in markets with very different legal requirements. But when Scott came across Global Spirit Masters, he couldn’t wait. “We had finished the R&D and I just thought, why not?” he says.
The judges were intrigued. Goldenbird arrived with no public profile, no launch plan, yet the drinks stood out. Several of Scott’s entries picked up gold medals, including Romance Apocalypse, proving that his garage experiments could hold their own against leading mixologists.
Romance Apocalypse is "like getting slapped in the face by a bunch of flowers"
Scott doubled down on his efforts to launch Goldenbird only to find that ready to drink cocktails take just as long to bring to market as Scotch whisky. It wasn’t just his modelling career or regulatory hurdles, but the arrival of Scott and Prier’s first baby that sent Goldenbird into hibernation.
Now officially in launch phase, Goldenbird offers its four award-winning recipes with another two launching in April. Those six will be Goldenbird’s first permanent collection with seasonal variations to follow.
Looking ahead, Scott already has plans for the brand’s next chapter. “I'd like to see, years down the line, we will eventually have a flagship bar somewhere,” Scott says. “For now, we’ve been doing pop ups through Fashion Week, and we've had a lot of interest.”
Some of Goldenbird’s earliest customers are cocktail bars, which have been buying Scott’s concoctions in bulk to serve as a base for recipes on their menus. They take the pre-bottled mixtures, apply bar-appropriate tweaks, and serve. That, Scott says, is where more cocktail bars will go.
“I think a lot of bars now are using pre-batching,” he says. “You get a high-quality liquid with stability and consistency without the hassle of trying to teach someone how to get it right. It plays into a faster service, reduces staff costs… it's a win, win for everyone. It’s not everywhere, but it's going to be the way of the future.”
No matter where Goldenbird goes, it will remain a deeply personal pursuit for Scott, who has not only developed the recipes but designed the fragrance-inspired bottles. He’s not just the face of the brand, but the substance behind it.
The Midleton Very Rare Vintage is back and, perhaps, better than ever. The 2026 edition marks the 43rd annual release from the Irish distillery and the sixth from master distiller Kevin O’Gorman, who finds himself with increasingly mature stocks in which to make it.
Now, the Midleton Very Rare Vintage has always been a non-age statement (NAS), and while that remains the official line from the distillery, we can tell you that the 2026 vintage is made with whiskies ranging from 14 to 36 years old.
Master distiller Kevin O’Gorman told me: “This year, I used some very old grain whiskies in first fill bourbon and another in a second fill bourbon. One of those was 36 years old, the other was 32 years old. At that age, it has this wonderful honeycomb note. All these different flavor profiles come together to create a complex whiskey.”
Nose: The initial hit on the nose is deeply citrus. Less lemon zest, more freshly squeezed lemon juice. It's sharp, and there are perfumed notes in there as well; floral and herbaceous. That signature Midleton sugar sweetness takes time to develop, but the toffee is there on the nose, albeit in the background.
Palate: There's far more of that toffee and butterscotch on the palate. The texture is almost chewy. It coats the mouth. There's more lemon zest and even a hint of ginger, which warms the tongue ever so slightly across the mid-palate. Eventually, it gives way to savory notes.
Finish: A medium finish offers soft cinnamon spice and toasted oak.
