Bilgray's Garden Wine List

Menu

[Menu] Bilgray's Garden Wine List. Imp Minerva: Colon, Republic of Panama, [ca.1940]. Single folio (270x140mm) stiff ceram card, printed verso & recto. Lightly soiled.

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BILGRAY'S GARDEN

[Menu] Bilgray's Garden Wine List

Colon, Republic of Panama : Imp. Minerva, [ca.1938].

Single leaf (270x140mm) stiff cream card, printed verso & recto. Lightly soiled, ink stamp adding Milwaukee Brewing drinks to bottom; some signs of commercial use; central crease, rust mark left from a paperclip attaching a daily special to the list.

Max Holmer Bilgray (1884-1958) was a saloon keeper in Chicago, Reno and Wyoming. When the Volstead Act was passed establishing Prohibition, he moved to the Panama Canal Zone.  He opened Bilgray's, Tropic Bar & Restaurant in 1921 in Colon, at the eastern or Caribbean end of the otherwise dry Panama Canal Zone.    A haven for ex-patriates, Bilgray's regular customers were business owners, society figures, movie stars, sophisticated gamblers and US Military officers,¹ (Bilgray's was off-limits to enlisted personnel): the central American version of Rick's Place in Casablanca, Bilgray's was often the model for the matinee comic romances produced during the 1930s involving cabaret performances in outdoor tropical settings and actors such as Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astair and the likes.

The bar became internationally famous in 1930 in connection with the 'Hallelujah' cocktail, a drink invented by Bilgray and dedicated to the American evangelist and prohibitionist Aimee Semple McPherson "in honour of [her] visit, (incognito) to Bilgray's Caberet"².  The cocktail: brandy and rum, shaken with lemon, vermouth and grenadine³. 

In 1938, Bilgray's Garden was established as an open air cabaret with dancing, floor shows and cabaret.  The spirits and cocktails offered were sophisticated and included the Hallelujah.  Native spirits were offered as well as American and European traditional spirits. Slings, Rickies and Fizz were also popular.  The wine list offers appellation wines from Europe, even Champagne, all in quarts and pints (no bottles!).  The beers appear to be local imitations as Bass is spelt Bass's and Guiness is 'Ginnes's Stout'.

A rare ephemeral item evoking the heady days of the 1930s.

§ Unrecorded.

¹  Berry, Jeff & Wondrich, David. The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. New York : Oxford University Press, 2022.  pps.81-82.
²  Ibid.
³  Baker, Charles Jnr. Jigger, Beaker & Glass. New York : Derrydale Press, 1939 p.49.

Item #10714

Price: $200.00 AUD