Blue Bottle Holiday Gift Guide: James Freeman's Picks

Our founder and CPO shares a few of his favorite things

Not unlike the Blue Bottle Holiday Collection, James Freeman's gift list comprises a world of delight.

For the French mechanic who has fixed my eccentric French cars since the early 1990s: a holiday mug illustrated with a charming drawing of a Peugeot 505 wagon, and coffee to go with it. 

For all my cocktail-loving friends who go to Tokyo, and then return morose because they are 6,000 miles from perfect ice: An ice mold that gets you very, very close to perfection. My friends can then enjoy the ice they make with a finger or two of Hibiki twelve-year poured into a perfect, delicate Hario tumbler with sides as thin as a dragonfly's wing. 

When I realized I will never be Francis Mallman: a really good meat thermometer. 

There is a pepper mill that supersedes all the thinking I have ever done about pepper mills, a pepper mill that is so laughingly superior to any other pepper mill I have seen or used that it inspires a haunting thought every time I pick it up: Why, after so many years of education and striving, is a pepper mill the most perfect object I own? And how did it come to be called the Unicorn Magnum Plus? 

For a couple of friends who own record players and are heading up to Portland, Maine, this spring and need a reason to stop at a great cafe: The Tandem Coffee Vinyl and Coffee Subscription. 

There really is a Cap of Courage. And it really works.