Sept/Oct 08 | Features

Best of the New South

50 people, places and things that make us proud

Tiamo has eleven secluded and fully screened bungalows—with huge hammocks and sofas—all arranged around a main lodge and a Caribbean-themed restaurant. In fact, life at Tiamo is so easy you’ll likely forget that its electricity is 100 percent solar-generated and the effluent from its luxe bathrooms is composted. The only way to get there is by launch from a nearby charter airstrip or (if you’re flying out of Nassau) a retro-cool seaplane that pulls right onto the beach. (tiamoresorts.com; 242-471-8087)

Bookstore

Square Books, Oxford, Mississippi

One of the last true literary bookstores standing, Square Books—on Courthouse Square in Oxford—was a humble operation when Richard and Lisa Howorth opened it in 1979. But even then it carried just the right literary mix and cultivated customer allegiance through old-fashioned service, which earned it some important friends: Willie Morris, Bill Ferris, Barry Hannah, William Styron, Rick Bass, John Grisham, and the late, great Larry Brown, to name just a few.

Before long, it had a national reputation as a reader’s—and a writer’s—hangout that kept its focus on ferreting out the right titles to slake the University of Mississippi’s literary thirst. Today there’s also an annex to the store—Off Square Books—plus a café on the second floor with great veranda seating. And on Thursdays there’s even a local radio show from on-site called Thacker Mountain Radio. Take that, chain stores. (squarebooks.com; 662-236-2262; 800-648-4001)

Bourbon

Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve, Louisville, Kentucky

Age, Kentucky know-how, and a recipe dating back four generations make this top-shelf bourbon a prized commodity. For those in the know, fall is the best time to snap some up. The company releases the majority of its stock in September. (oldripvanwinkle.com; 502-897-9113)

Chef

Sean Brock, Charleston, South Carolina

Hard to argue that Sean Brock of McCrady’s isn’t one of the hottest and most innovative chefs in the Southeast. But recently he’s also become something of a farmer. Last fall, Brock thought he might put to the test the two years he had spent donating labor to local farms by leasing a three-acre plot of oak- and pine-ringed farmland on Wadmalaw Island. Brock and his co-workers had no idea that the project would completely transform their most basic notions of how food arrives on a table. “From three acres, we’re getting ten times the food we can cook,” he says. “We might use fifty pounds of heirloom tomatoes a week, but last week we harvested five hundred.”