February/March 2024

Garden & Gun

Soul of the South

Garden & Gun2 min readLeadership
Garden & Gun
David DiBenedetto Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief Creative Director Marshall McKinney / Photography and Visuals Director Maggie Brett Kennedy Executive Editor Amanda Heckert / Deputy Editor David Mezz Art Director Julia Knetzer / Photo Editor
Garden & Gun2 min read
Whiskey Tales
■ Follow me on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) @davedibenedetto When I lived in New York City in the late nineties, bourbon on the rocks was my go-to drink order. Besides the taste (and punch) of whiskey, I liked that it spoke to my Southern roots
Garden & Gun2 min read
Contributors
PHOTOGRAPHER Peter Yang’s secret to looking great in photos: Don’t take yourself too seriously. “There’s something corny about someone trying to be good looking,” says the Texas-raised, Los Angeles–based photographer, who captured portraits of the co
Garden & Gun2 min read
“I Was In The Parking Lot In My ’72 Mercury Listening To ‘Margaritaville’ One More Time”
■ Find us on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok @gardenandgun IN GOOD SPIRITS What’s the best gift to give a party host (Southern Conundrum, December 2023/January 2024)? A donation in your host’s name to a nonprofit organization t
Garden & Gun5 min read
Stand-Up Gal
Night sweats, cellulite, elderly parents: No topic is off-limits to Leanne Morgan, the Knoxville-based stand-up comic who at fifty-eight has only recently broken into the zeitgeist after years toiling at comedy clubs. That attention comes thanks in p
Garden & Gun3 min read
Southern Rock Rekindled
Any band that’s been together a long time develops an innate sense of familiarity. Live, that could mean hand signals or a simple nod to switch up a set list mid-show. Studio recording becomes second nature—vocals done in one room, drums usually in a
Garden & Gun4 min read
Hot Shots
Grace Callahan calls them “Frankenstocks,” and she doesn’t miss them one bit. A hunter, top-level shooting instructor, and eight-time member of the National Sporting Clays Association All-American ladies team, Callahan grew up shouldering shotguns wi
Garden & Gun4 min read
Tangling with Twain
■ James, Doubleday, $28 If the whole of philosophy is a footnote to Plato, as someone once quipped, then the whole of American literature might be deemed a footnote to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway certainly thought so: “All modern
Garden & Gun3 min read
Is It Ever Okay to Alter a Piece of Family Heirloom Jewelry?
Imagine, if you will, a pair of cuff links. But not just any cuff links. Cuff links that once secured the sleeves of your grandfather, who died when you were a toddler. You’ve heard him spoken of as morally upright, a bank president, a strict Irish C
Garden & Gun2 min read
Totally Rad
Spectacular. That’s the word that came to mind the first time New Orleans native Chris Borges laid eyes on a watermelon radish. “I was in school in California, in the mecca of sustainable agriculture and farm-to-table, and so we were seeing a lot of
Garden & Gun2 min read
The Warm and Fuzzies
More than a few months remain before Southern peaches arrive in earnest. Until then, peaches held captive in jars and cans may be freed to help one get through the interminable wait. Or you might get your fix with a cocktail. Peaches have long made t
Garden & Gun6 min read
Fish Fry Heaven
Every year, at about 5:00 p.m. on the Tuesday that falls forty-seven days before the Sunday after the first full moon on, or after, the vernal equinox—which is to say, Mardi Gras Day—for about fifteen minutes, I get depressed. Carnival, the greatest
Garden & Gun4 min read
Meat Me at Mu
A white Jeep blocks the old drive-through lane of a one-time McDonald’s, set in the back of a Shell station in the Orlando suburb of Kissimmee, a patchwork of stucco strip malls southeast of the theme parks. On the deck around front, men gather in th
Garden & Gun2 min read
The Ozarks in Technicolor
Before he even reached the cases of shiny silver dishes and booths of vintage state plates, Daniel Barrett Mathis spotted the strangest hunk of pottery near the door of the I-44 Antique Mall in Tulsa. The vase looked heavy and its colors shocking, he
Garden & Gun1 min read
Driving Ambitions
Conjure speedster Steve McQueen with retro Hestra driving gloves, made from thin, pliable hair-sheep leather ideal for milder weather ($150; huckberry.com). Inspired by the Shelby Cobra, this Breitling stunner’s subdials reference the tachometer and
Garden & Gun5 min read
A Mix All His Own
Let us now praise odd-looking dogs—the homely ones, the mystery breeds, the kind that don’t quite make sense no matter how long you stare. Let’s praise dogs like Dexter, the mutt of my heart. Take a wiener dog’s length, add a pit bull’s muscles and a
Garden & Gun3 min read
French Quarter Fete
On the plot of land numbered 211 on a 1728 map of New Orleans, Heather Harllee’s three children have found treasures: willowware china; old shoes; handwrought nails; a pirate’s map on graphing paper; glass bottles from the Greenbrier resort in West V
Garden & Gun5 min read
Putting Up the Past
When Earth began to tilt away from the sun, and the mountain air cooled enough to flirt with frost, we bundled up and went to the garden. It felt ancestral, that pull, compelling us to tug on our wool things and grab the poplar baskets we kept on the
Garden & Gun5 min read
Pour One For Me
THE BUNGALOW SPRAWL OF A GREAT WESTERN CITY MOVEDbeneath me like stops on a zoetrope wheel. I looked out the window of the plane and felt the plastic airline cup flex in my hand. The first sip of bourbon burned in a thrilling way. I watched a Wes And
Garden & Gun1 min read
Bourbon’s Dance Partners
Bourbon’s distillation chiefly from corn can initially make for a spirit that lacks distinct contours. Distillers offset this slackness by using secondary grains, such as rye, and through long aging in oak barrels, which provides a tannic edge as if
Garden & Gun5 min read
Temples Of Whiskey
BOURBON’S POPULARITY IN RECENT YEARS HAS GIVEN RISE to a new culture of reverence. Once just whiskey, cheap and good, now it’s often expensive and great, with many bourbons exalted and a few essentially deified. You can also find houses of worship, w
Garden & Gun2 min read
The New Tastemakers
After founding her eponymous spirits consulting firm, industry vet Peggy Noe Stevens started the Bourbon Women Association in 2011, building on a career that had earned her the title of first female master bourbon taster a decade earlier. The organiz
Garden & Gun2 min read
History Distilled
A newspaper in Bourbon County, Kentucky, runs an advertisement for “Bourbon Whiskey” by the barrel or keg, the first known appearance of that phrase in print. A Kentucky grocer sends a letter to distiller John Corlis placing an order and recommending
Garden & Gun3 min read
Up Next?
NO, BOURBON DOES NOT NEED TO BE MADE IN KENTUCKY (JUST THE United States). And—are you sitting down?—some of the boldest, most flavorful bourbon being produced today is emerging out of Texas. “It’s like Kentucky whiskey, but amplified,” says Jake Cle
Garden & Gun7 min read
All Roads Lead To Bourbon
THE PARKING LOT OF THE PARTY SOURCE, A MASSIVE liquor store in Newport, Kentucky, might seem an unlikely location for an award-winning craft distillery. But as my friend Will Hinkle and I pull into the lot, New Riff Distilling’s gleaming copper still
Garden & Gun11 min read
Man Of The Sea
CHICO FERNÁNDEZ’S FAVORITE EVERGLADES BIRD IS THE GREEN HERON. “You know how he is always perched on the downward slope of a mangrove branch?” Fernández asks, as if everyone knows where green herons prefer to perch. That’s what he loves about the bir
Garden & Gun8 min read
Haven In A Holler
EEEAAA-ONGK! EEEEAAA-OOONGK! It’s hard to judge if the abrupt braying of mother-and-son donkey duo Little Edie and Diego is truly as loud as it seems, or if the clamor is more a reflection of the prevailing tranquility of DrinkWater Farm. Regardless,
Garden & Gun18 min read
Paintball’s First Shot
PROSPECT, PENNSYLVANIA. JULY 24, 2004 As I stood beside the tank, strapping on another ammo belt, the sounds of the battle were getting closer. In the woods to the east of us, I could hear bursts of rifle fire, the screams of the wounded, the brayin
Garden & Gun6 min read
Florida’s Wild Heart
In De Leon Springs State Park, just north of DeLand, Florida, I walk toward Old Methuselah, an ancient bald cypress. Lush green ferns unfold at its base, and the towering canopy eats up all available sky space, outcompeting the sweet gums and water h
Garden & Gun3 min read
Spin City
In New York City, they’re known as bodegas, the corner stores where you can buy a bagel and a cup of coffee or Kleenex and cigarettes, probably dodging a house cat or two as they scurry through aisles and plop down on the candy bars. In Japan, they’r
Garden & Gun10 min read
The Southern Agenda
Even before the Kentucky Bourbon Trail was established twenty-five years ago, brown-water aficionados had long flocked to the state, which produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon. “Before 1999, people would show up to a distillery even if it didn’
Garden & Gun3 min read
B Is for Bourbon
I know I have enjoyed a great deal of merriment and bourbon, together, over the years. So how to explain how seldom the word bourbon appears in a context of humor? Most words with two b’s in them are good for a couple of laughs: bubbly blab bubba bam

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