In the days of yore, no beverage inspired more flourished prose or fervent debate than the Kentucky Derby’s very own mint julep. Some have even posited that a clueless Yankee’s addition of nutmeg started the Civil War. More than a cocktail, the julep embodied the Southern proclivity for self-expression through consumption.
“It is a ceremony and must be performed by a gentleman possessing a true sense of the artistic, a deep reverence for the ingredients and a proper appreciation of the occasion,” Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. sermonized in a letter dated 1937.
To muddle or not to muddle, that was The Question. A local judge, Joshua Soule Smith, warned, “Like a woman’s heart, mint gives its sweetest aroma when bruised,” but local colorist Irvin S. Cobb was raised on the mantra, “Any guy who’d put rye in a mint julep and crush the leaves would put scorpions in a baby’s bed.”
Despite the ongoing debate, one thing agreed upon was that juleps were best consumed below the Mason-Dixon Line. “The Southerner sips his julep with the leisurely dignity of a Roman,” reported The Courier-Journal in 1907.
But today, polls reveal that a mere quarter of Southerners have ever sampled the iconic cocktail. Even Louisvillians derisively begrudge one glass a year to May festivities, while others leave the clichéd imbibing to naive tourists. How did the mighty julep fall?
Although generally associated with belle lash-batting and blueblood hobnobbing, plantation porches and magnolia moonlight, the julep – like most of the good things in life – has humble origins. Along the East Coast in the 18th century the julep was a freewheeling combination of whatever herbaceous leaves and libations were on hand.
In hardy pioneer style, juleps were taken in the morning. Farmers prized them as a stimulant for the day’s labor ahead. Others advocated the julep’s so-called medicinal properties in warding off fevers from night chills and hot climates. Corn whiskey, the precursor to Kentucky bourbon, was a lower cost alternative to the wine or brandy julep, and postwar impoverishment furthered its emergence as the default ingredient.
The bourbon julep was a universal source of pleasure when the Run for the Roses commenced in 1875. Upon the Jazz Age eve of 1919, it was prepared from mint grown outside the Churchill Downs clubhouse. During Prohibition, many feared the mint julep would not return to The Derby.
“While the forty-fifth Kentucky Derby will long be remembered for many reasons, it will always be remembered as the last Derby when that most delectable of drinks, Kentucky’s own concoction, the famous Mint Julep, was available to take the sting from defeat and give edge to victory,” wrote a journalist in the Lexington Thoroughbred Record.
However, Louisvillians were not to be stripped of their mint juleps so easily.
“The annual whiskey robbery preceding the running of the Kentucky Derby in Louisville was committed Friday night at the distillery warehouse…and the stolen liquor, it is believed, eventually will be peddled by bootleggers among the crowd attending the race meeting,” read a 1923 article in The Louisville Times.
In 1938, The Derby commemorated the defeat of The Noble Experiment by serving the newly official drink in the now-famous commemorative glasses.
In 1952, Rudy Toombs penned the oft-covered tune “One Mint Julep,” which implicated the eponymous cocktail in his years-spanning blackout between a party flirtation and a burdensome marriage bearing six children.
Connoisseurs generally regard the kitsch-laden 1950s as the end of sophisticated cocktail culture, only revivified in the last decade by a new generation of history-minded mixolgists. Bourbon too is increasingly casting its amber glow over the vodka monopoly.
The julep is primed for its deserved comeback. A wonderfully alive and crisp drink, it is a most pure cocktail. Fresh ingredients and a mild sweetener allow the spirit to shine. Aesthetically, a well-prepared julep, in its regal silver cup, may have no equal.
The crushed ice infuses every drop and lends itself to sipping in a slow but zingy savor. It is a most fitting accoutrement to a day spent in anticipation of two minutes of action. This century’s great julep arbiter, New Orleans bartender Chris McMillian, ruminated on the nuanced layers of bourbon, sugar, and mint.
“Each sip progressively takes you there and each sip is different from the one preceding it,” said McMillian. “Few drinks have that multidimensionality, building to the crescendo.”
In McMillian’s YouTube preparation of this holy concoction, he recites Kentucky Colonel Joshua Soule Smith’s immortal ode.
“Then comes the zenith of man’s pleasure. Then comes the julep – the mint julep. Who has not tasted one has lived in vain…The nectar of the Gods is tame beside it. It is the very dream of drinks,” wrote Smith in the Lexington Herald.
The transcendent experience of dipping one’s nose into an intoxicating bouquet of mint sprig is too good to relegate to the first Saturday in May. But it’s a good place to start.
– Brynn White
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