When on safari in Africa, Hemingway always kept several bottles of Campari and Gordon’s gin on hand, in order to whip up a gimlet or a sort of lazy man’s Negroni. He never saw fit to record what he carted them around in however. Most likely a battered old leather correspondent’s case, although it’s possible he purchased some sort of campaign bar at the original Abercrombie & Fitch store in Manhattan, where he liked to buy his safari jackets. We’re picturing a bluff wooden trunk-type affair, redolent of British officers in India sitting around quaffing gin and tonics to “protect” themselves from malaria.
We imagine it would have looked a lot like the Blade & Bow Field Bar recently commissioned for Garden & Gun, one of the world’s best magazines. Designed, of course, to hold a bottle (not included, sadly) of Blade & Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. And a damned handsome bottle it is too, with its brass key motif paying tribute to the historic Stitzel-Weller Distillery built by the Van Winkle family in Louisville in 1935.
Unless you are a hardcore, Hemingway-esque character who cannot go grouse hunting (or play a round of golf) without a properly-made Old Fashioned on hand at every turn however, it may be hard to justify the $4,600 price tag of this portable piece of cocktail nostalgia. But if you care enough to own a vintage Land Rover, wear only hand-loomed Harris Tweed, and use a London-made shotgun, it may be just the thing.
