Picnic Cocktails at Newport Polo

Serving quality cocktails in the great outdoors is no mean feat. Bugs, fickle weather, and a lack of resources make transporting cocktails a challenge: but, as a result of the harrowing setting, in no other place is liquid courage more necessary. Transporting cocktails amid nature’s most traumatic obstacles isn’t easy, but like modern (drunk) Shackletons we overcame and survived to tell the tale of serving picnic cocktails at the Newport Polo match.

The first cocktail was a large-batch version of the Bailey cocktail. I first read about the Bailey in Philip Greene’s “To Have and Have Another,” a brilliant homage to Hemingway’s boozing. The Bailey was invented by Gerald Murphy, famed host to guests like Hemingway, Picasso, Cole Porter, and Dorothy Parker. He was not only an excellent host because he let the ne’er do well artists loll about rent free in his (and his wife’s) villa in the French Riviera, but also because he mixed delicious cocktails. The Bailey is evidence. It’s a fresh, simple, yet irresistible spring-like mix that’s perfect to serve al fresco. I squeezed the citrus the morning of the match, and the cocktail was preserved beautifully in ice to enjoy that the afternoon.

The other cocktail I brought was a favorite I’ve made every summer: a bourbon, peach, ginger, Arnold Palmer. It’s a delicious combination of bitter, sour, fresh, and sweet. I made two mason jars full and not a sliver of peach was left by the last chukker.

If you plan on bringing picnic cocktails with you this summer, I recommend these recipes.