Garden & Gun August/September 2019

EDITOR’S LETTER A Taste for Barbecue SAVORING THE SPREAD OF AN ICONIC SOUTHERN FOOD DAVID DIBENEDETTO Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief One of my all-time favorite dove shoots happened a little more than five years ago. It was a simple affair. My friend Jason Harkey had a field near Mayesville, South Carolina, that was holding a steady number of birds and also provided a perfect place to work our dogs, both Boykin spaniels. When I pulled up around noon, Jason had a Styrofoam clamshell filled with a couple of pounds of pulled pork from Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway on the tailgate, along with a loaf of Sunbeam white bread, a ziplock bag stuffed with fresh pork rinds, and two bottles of Red Rock strawberry soda. I don’t remember…

How Do You Take Your Bourbon? Recently, during a Pappy Van Winkle bourbon tasting at Blackberry Farm, at an event for members of our Garden & Gun Society, I asked Julian P. Van Winkle III if there was a correct way to drink bourbon. Neat? On the rocks? With a splash of water? Van Winkle is the president of the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery. His answer? Any way you like it. He divulged that he sometimes adds one ice cube and a lemon twist to his Pappy, and he also makes a mean old-fashioned with it. In other words, whatever your preferred brand of bourbon, don’t let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn’t drink it.…

CONTRIBUTORS “Barbecue is the most terrifying thing to write about. Somebody’s going to get mad” —Kathleen Purvis on regional barbecue’s divisive nature (see p. 87) William Abranowicz PHOTOGRAPHER “In the South, the air often has a heaviness to it,” says William Abranowicz. As he captured images of a bayou estate for “Louisiana Timepiece” (p. 104), it rained. “But when the light came out late in the day and raked across all that moisture, it was magical,” he says. Abranowicz, a photographer for more than forty years, has shot for nearly every major publication in the United States, and his work appears in the collections of the Smithsonian. His upcoming photography book, inspired by the struggle for voting rights, took him all over the Deep South. Kathleen Purvis WRITER “Barbecue is…

LETTERS “All this time I have been using my tomato server for cranberry sauce” TOUCHING TRIBUTES Teary-eyed after reading Taylor Brown’s “Two for the Road” (June/July 2019). I lost my dad, too, and I cannot think of a more fitting way to think of him than as “a whisper in your mind.” Eddie Lewis Woodstock, Georgia In Ada Limón’s Good Dog (June/July 2019), I cried at “Lily Bean is the kindest soul I’ve ever known.” Our dogs are family, too. Deborah Martin Saint Helena Island, South Carolina WE AIM TO PLEASE What could be more Southern than an issue of G&G with Forrest Gump, the sons of the Allman Brothers Band, and floating gardenias (June/July 2019)? I think you covered it. Jennifer Powell The Woodlands, Texas All this time I…

Social Chatter GARDENANDGUN.COM AND BEYOND WE ASKED... What’s the best style of barbecue? On Facebook and Instagram, we started a food fight by asking you to name the South’s tastiest regional ’cue. I never met BBQ I didn’t like, but Memphis is my fave. @teresabaierl Texas style on Saturday night. Eastern North Carolina on Sunday after church. Johnathan Stancil Whole hog, because you get it all. Bob Christian North Alabama pulled pork, red sauce, hot mustard slaw. @fifty shadesofgrayson Vinegar above all. You want that sweet mess, go eat some molasses. @fouractual I bleed mustard sauce. Andrew Price Just like tacos, all types of barbecue are God’s children. All have their place. JacobWade If it’s pork, it’s BBQ. Don’t try to foist brisket or godforsaken chicken on me. Roger Davis…

INTERVIEW Perfect Casting TODAY SHOW NEWS ANCHOR CRAIG MELVIN WEARS HIS SOUTHERN PRIDE ON HIS SLEEVE By Allison Glock PHOTOGRAPHS BY NIGEL PARRY NBC News correspondent andTodayshow news anchor Craig Melvin was raised “in a house where there was always talking, lots of talking.” So it’s no surprise to him that he finds himself in conversation for a living, bringing to his coverage a warmth and sincerity he attributes to his upbringing in South Carolina, where storytelling was a way of life and his mother rarely ended a chat with a stranger in under fifteen minutes. Melvin, who also cohosts the third hour of Today, shares his mother’s welcoming loquaciousness and his father’s wry curiosity, and notes that even though he now lives with his wife and two young children…