Peachy Keen: Willie Nelson and a Brief History of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream

Oh happy day! Ben & Jerry are presenting us with a whole new flavor to drool over. Yes folks, today marks the street date for Willie Nelson’s Country Peach Cobbler (peach ice cream with cinnamon sugar shortbread pieces). With the new creation, Willie joins the ranks of progressive pop culture icons Jerry Garcia, Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Wavy Gravy and, most recently, Stephen Colbert, all of whom have been awarded their very own tailor-made ice cream flavors. The question on hardcore ice cream enthusiasts’ minds (besides “where’s a spoon?”) is: Do Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (the founding fathers of the Vermont-based ice cream empire) actually decide who’s worthy of a flavor themselves? And perhaps more importantly, who determines that Jerry Garcia’s namesake batch consists of cherries and fudge flakes while Wavy Gravy’s concoction is caramel, cashew and Brazil nut ice cream? When you think of Trey Anastasio, is chocolate ice cream with “gooey” marshmallow, caramel and fudge really what comes to mind? We took it upon ourselves to find out the answers to these probing questions so that you could spend less time pondering them and more time eating Peach Cobbler while rocking out to “I Gotta Get Drunk.” We talked to Sean Greenwood, a spokesperson at Ben & Jerry’s corporate offices in South Burlington, Vermont, who told us that artists are deemed flavor-worthy on the basis of their humanitarian efforts. The more do-good, environment-friendly, help-the-kids-in-Africa stuff you have on your resume, the better the chance that the folks at B&J will consider you for your very own ice cream. According to Greenwood, Ben’s and Jerry’s personal musical tastes have nothing to do with it. So banish those visions of the burly guys concocting ice cream flavors while listening intently to their iPods. Greenwood tells us that tasty collaborations have come about in all sorts o
	Published: 2007-03-19 Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: General