The bars · California
Absolut Icebar Mojave
A bar made of Swedish river ice, built in the California desert for one night in December 2009, to mark the unveiling of a spaceplane.
What it was for
Virgin Galactic unveiled SpaceShipTwo at Mojave Air and Space Port on 7 December 2009. Absolut Icebar built what it called the world's first ice bar in the Mojave Desert to serve the event, with a cocktail list developed specifically for it. The site named Richard Branson, then California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the aircraft designer Burt Rutan as hosts of the evening.
The storm
The archived page carries three captions and very little else: Hurricane in the Mojave Desert, Space ship unveiling, and After the storm — Absolut Icebar was the only thing standing. A severe storm hit the desert site that night. By the site's own account the ice bar came through it better than the marquees did.
Why it belongs in the archive
Mojave is the clearest illustration of what the brand was actually selling. There was no commercial case for a permanent bar in the Mojave Desert. The point was that ice cut from a frozen river in Lapland could be assembled into a functioning bar in one of the hottest, driest places in North America, for a single evening, and hold.
Rebuilt from the Internet Archive's captures of this URL between 2008 and 2011, when absoluticebar.com was the official site of the Absolut Icebar bars. The wording is the archive's own summary of what the page said; quoted material is attributed.
Historical detail on this page describes the bars as they were then. For anything current — hours, prices, whether a bar still exists — go to the operator.