Latest / Into The Barchive / The Mint Julep – From Medicine to Derby Icon
Transcript
- ITB: Welcome in Barkavist. This weekend, more than 150,000 people will gather at Churchill Downs. Yeah, millions more are going to watch from home and in nearly every case, whether in a souvenir glass or in a silver cup, there's going to be a mint julep nearby. Talk to me more about it then. You know, the mint julep has become inseparable from the Kentucky Derby, but it's important to remember something. The julep is older than the Derby. Really? Yeah, I mean, in fact, it's older than Bourbon's dominance in Kentucky. It's older even than the United States itself. No way. Absolutely. So today on Into the Bar-Cybe, we're going to look past the pageantry to examine the julep as a historical object. A drink that began as medicine in the Middle East, evolved in colonial America, absorbed the realities of black labor in the South and eventually became one of the most ritualized cocktails in the country. Sounds like we need a little drink to unfold this history. I think that would be very appropriate. Let's head to the bar and get swizzling. Let's swizzle. For our first cocktail, we have the classic mint julep. If you notice, two ingredients here, our bourbon and our mint syrup. You may go, hey Tim, where's the actual fresh mint? No worries there, we'll talk about that in just a moment. But the great thing about this cocktail is it's all built in the julep glass, the julep cup. So what we're gonna do, two and a half ounces. of our Woodford. Derby, the 150 edition, which was the 2024, if I remember correctly. two years ago. So there's two ounces there. And let's go ahead and get another half ounce into the tin or into our glass. And now talk about the mint syrup. So for consistency, because depending on what type of mint you have or the time of year you have or if it's even available in your garden, making a mint syrup allows you to have mint, the consistency of the mint flavor year-round instead of using a fresh mint that may be more bitter, less sweet, less aromatic. So in our approach, we typically make a mint syrup for our cocktails that we can keep year-round to make sure that we have the same consistency of a mint flavor. ⁓ throughout every one of our cocktails. Here, we're go a half ounce. If you wanted a little sweeter, for those of you that don't like just a drier mint julep, you can bump that up to maybe three quarters of an ounce, but a half ounce should do you fine. Straight into your tin. And the next thing we're going to do is add a skosh of pebble ice, just enough pebble ice to get about to that same wash line into our Julep Cup. So as soon as you start to fill it and your ice gets to the same level, if not just above, you're good. And now we're going to do a pre-swizzle. In our cocktail making, we've learned that starting this off helps with the dilution part without making a lot of mess, with helping make sure that we get a good consistency of dilution as we're going through, because I can watch my pebbles. I'm doing the swizzle and once the ice level drops below my wash line in the cocktail in the julep cup I Know that I've swizzled this enough to have the right dilution now that I'm looking for at least the initial dilution that I'm looking for I've got a good amount right now and if you notice also From just the amount that I'd swizzle so far. I've actually started building the frost around So tempering that cup so it helps keep the cocktail cold longer as we're going to go throughout the day. Again, we're going to finish off topping with a little bit of pebble ice, not all the way to the top where we're getting that snowy ⁓ ice peak, just enough to get about to the same, say, wash line. From here, swizzle again. Again, the reason we're swizzling here, we're mixing up that syrup, we're mixing up that bourbon, making sure that we get good contact with the ice, getting a little extra dilution. I know that I've got a good bit of swizzling done where I need to be is if you look at the jute cup now, it has built a good frost on the outside of it. It is really starting to come through, almost icy looking on the outside. Once it gets to that nice white gloss, I think I've got to a good point all the way up from top to bottom. I'm good with my swizzling there. Top it off one last time. Get a snowy, snowy mountain peak of ice. Like that traditional ice cap of a julep should look like. Yeah, and this is mine so I don't care if my hands are all over it making that dome. And what makes the julep the julep? You gotta have that fresh mint. Grab you a nice floral bouquet. Slap it, wake it up, maybe give it a little squishy poo. Make that thing alive, drop it in, and then add your straw right next to the mint. Remember, drinking is more than just in your mouth. It's with your nose and eyes as well. And now, my friends, we have our classic mint julep. Cheers. For second julep, we're going to make a prescription julep. This cocktail was first published in an 1857 edition of Harper's Monthly Magazine, kind of playing cheekily with the idea of the pharmaceutical origins of the julep, and it actually made it into Jerry Thomas's 1862 Bartender's Guide. this book, the first cocktail book in American history that we've referred to numerous times in this podcast. So we're going to start by putting in an ounce and a half of cognac or a good quality brandy. So that kind of will allude to that the mint and julep wasn't always bourbon and actually started with brandy. But to give a nod to some of the American rates, we're going to add a half ounce of rye whiskey. And since Woodford reserve is the official sponsor or bourbon sponsor of the Kentucky Derby, we will use their rye whiskey here in our prescription julep. And then we'll add that three quarters of an ounce of mint syrup. So a little more than in Tim's mint julep. Now the peppery-ness of the rye will cut through some of that, so add our mint syrup. And now we're gonna use the same swizzle technique. Add a scoop or two of the pebble ice so you can get like a pebble ice scooper at your house like... We've got the GE Opal. I'll try to get it linked as an affiliate link down below in the comments area. ⁓ But or go to your local Sonic or place that has a pebble eyes. So put our swizzle stick in and then it's just like Boy Scouts, right? You're starting a fire right with a stick just kind of keeping one hand still and with the other hand. just moving it back and forth, spinning that swizzle stick into the drink until you build up a certain level of froth. Some people, if you don't want the specialized tool, you could get a bar spin and just stir. But if you look at a swizzle stick, it's got like these prongs on all sides. so you're getting a little more action there. In the Caribbean, they actually have these made of wood that are the limbs of a particular type of tropical tree. So they would use that. So I added a few more scoops of pebble ice. Gonna go back and swizzle some more until I get a nice frost on the glass. And of course, like, when it's May and you're outside rather than in the studio here, that frost is going to build up a lot faster outside than when you're in a nicely air conditioned home. So if you're like, why is that my glass frosting quite as quickly? That may be part of the reason why, but where the julep is a drink that's meant to be refreshing and let those hot weather days. You know, as we enter May, it's really beginning to get warm. Typically, you may be dealing with some showers with the humidity that will affect the frosting as well on the glass. And again, there's not like a precise timing like with shaking where we say 10 to 15 seconds or stirring 30 to 45 seconds instead. It definitely is a more visual cue based on the glass. I will also say that as you do this, I try to avoid putting your hand on the glass because you don't want to do this by feel because you don't want to compromise that frost. And then just like Tim, even though we've done the mip flavor in the drink through a mint syrup, we're adding the fresh mint through the garnish. So slapping it, kind of crushing it to express the aroma. And then we'll put this nice bouquet of mint down into our cocktail and then add the straw right beside it. So as we go in to take a sip, we're getting that nose full of mint every sip we take. And here we have the prescription julep. Cheers. Now that we built the cocktails, let's build the context. Let's go. The julep are actually the prehistory of the julep. Yeah. So the julep has a long history. In fact, the ⁓ word julep comes from the Arabic word juleb. And, you know, I'm not fluent in Arabic, but any stretch of the imagination more than a so I may have butchered that. But that word, that Arabic word means rosewater syrup. Okay. And so it moved through Persian medicine and into Europe. And by the 17th century, the Julep wasn't really a cocktail at all, but like a sweetened medicinal preparation. love how most of these cocktails, the reason that it bounced around, was medicinal, medicinal, medicinal, and then evolves into a flavor. You know, I choose to have this thing, but a medicinal base. Yeah. So it starts as medicine and a julep is really just a vehicle to dev- to deliver bitter compounds in a palatable form. So, You say bitter in the modern era of this, I don't get anything bitter. So it must be from that original rose, petal, rose water, rose, whatever. Yeah. Okay. Walk me through that then. So Again, it's one of those things you add sugar, you add aromatics because maybe you're using that rose water syrup to deliver some other medicinal compound. Okay. Right. But when the Jula as it stands reaches colonial America, this is where alcohol enters the picture. Of course. Bring it to colonialism and we're bringing booze to the table. Yep. And these early American Julots often contain brandy or rum. ⁓ sugar, water, and sometimes mint. And they were frequently consumed in the morning. So this was a breakfast beverage. And so in that context, the julep functioned less as like leisure, right? And more as fortification, embracing tonics to begin the day. I would love that, that new approach. Hey, every morning we're going to approach this day with a julep. I'm going to fortify my day. I'm going to approach my day with the best after I have my julep. Yeah, absolutely. mean, that'd be nice. ⁓ But as we move into the 19th century, the julep becomes more culturally Southern. And that's where we need to kind of complicate the story a little bit, because of course, mint has to be grown. Sugar has to be Process ice has to be harvested and stored hospitality rituals that center the julep in the wealthier Plantation culture that could afford to have ice of course centers around and slave labor Yep, and so when we talk about juleps as a southern tradition We should hold both truths at one time the craftsmanship behind the drink itself and the historical, the broader historical context around the labor that produced it. All right. Dr. Jones, lay it on me. All right. So, you know, today we associate the mint and julep with Kentucky and the Derby, right? That bottle again, from the 150th running 2024. So about two years ago. Yep. It's all over the place. Woodford reserve has their mark on it and it is, I mean the centerpiece. Yeah. I mean the mint Julep, Kentucky bourbon, you know, it's not just Kentucky Derby, the key ingredients, Kentucky bourbon, but the history of the mint Julep in America as we know it like an N in a closer to modern form really dates back to Virginia. Okay. And I'm not following, but continue. Okay. So this story of the julep in Virginia is a story of African-American bartenders developing the drink and perfecting this drink to serve to wealthy white Virginians. And while the early mint julep was a mixture of spirits, mint, sugar, and water, an enslaved man named John Dabney elevated the mint julep to new heights by introducing ice. So We'll take a pause for a moment. All of these cocktails prior would have been made chilled-ish, maybe even room temperature. John Dabney comes to the table and was like, you know what? I've got some ice. I can make this better. Absolutely. And because we to remember, before refrigeration, ice was harvested from frozen lakes in the North, like the Great Lakes, and had to be transported South. This is very expensive. Yep. Right. It's difficult to store ice like pre-Civil War was a marker of wealth. So like if you go to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia, there's like an underground ice house. ⁓ yeah. You know, if you're a normal average Joe like you and me, you couldn't afford to have ice in your beverages. Yeah. You're not digging the, the, you're not digging down deep into the ground. deep enough to have a cellar where you can put bricks and by bricks, we're not talking like this size, we're talking about feet by feet of frozen lake, frozen river, frozen whatever water source spring, ⁓ making sure that they can then transport that from those northern areas down to a southern state. Yeah, that is wealthy. And again, all of this is before refrigeration, not just refrigerator in like your house to keep the ice, but refrigerator to move it. Yeah. Okay. Box box box cars. Yeah. So you didn't have refrigerated box cars, anything like that. And Dabney took the Julep a step even further by shaving the ice. So it's not like he took like a big chunk of ice like you might put in an old fashioned. He shaves the ice. So the drink continues to evolve as the ice melts and his drink became known as the hail storm julep and you would see like chunks of ice attach themselves to the outside of the cup and his julep wasn't just garnished with mint but all sorts of berries and fruit and it'd be piled high above the rim and you know, this is ice again is a novelty at this time And he is the one who introduces the silver cup, right? That wows his white patrons. So when we talk about a julep, if it's not served in a julep tin, a julep cup, is it a julep? Off camera, we were having some conversations with some individuals and that was part of the dialogue there was, you have a julep that's not served in a julep cup? Well, the answer is yes. It doesn't feel as elegant. Doesn't feel as right. Yeah. I mean, again, this this drink isn't just about how it tastes and the ingredients, the visual excess mattered, right? The silver cup, the shaved ice, the excessive garnish, serving crushed ice in July and pre-Civil War Virginia. is a demonstration of status, right? Only wealthy people can afford a drink like this. True. And so crushed ice also altered the drinking experience, right? It increases surface area, accelerates dilution, and it creates the signature frost on the exterior of this metal cup. I'm going to pause because we may talk about it a little bit later, but Let's in our mind keep shaved ice crushed ice Pebble ice let's talk about that in just a little bit sure. Okay, so to kind of wrap up the story about John Dabney He's bartending ⁓ as an enslaved man before the Civil War in fact, he used the earnings that his enslaver allowed him to keep to start saving up and buying his freedom for him and his wife. But before he could finish paying off his freedom, the Civil War happened, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment slavery was over. Interestingly enough, John Dabney kept paying for his freedom, even though he was already a freed man, and His decision to keep making this payments allowed him access to credit from Richmond banks. So while most of these white-owned banks would not loan money to a black man because John Dabney had continued making this payments, it paved the way for him to open a restaurant of his own as a free man of color in Virginia. I know we're not a restaurant or food. But I'm pretty sure you have plenty of stories to tell upon that. Maybe a little bit later, though. Yeah. Let's talk about the Julep as a Cocktail template. The classic Julep bin. Go down that path. So really, if you look at the structure, if we look at the Julep as a template, as we did in our first few episodes, it's easy. Spirit, sugar, herb, crushed ice or ice, right? And this structure predates the dominance of bourbon. And again, while we think of the mint julek today as a bourbon drink, the earliest juleks were made with brandy, like in the cognac in my prescription julek, or rum, or, most lavishly, peach brandy. And especially if you were in Virginia. ⁓ Peach brandy, with the exception of a few American distillers, is mostly extinct. There's no widespread peach brandy. I will say that I'm a bit of a collector-a-sort of peach brandies, no matter where I go. So, like, Highwire Distillery in Charleston, South Carolina. ⁓ Copper and Kings in Louisville, Kentucky. Catoctin Creek in Virginia. And a number of Colorado distilleries, because of their palisade peaches. have made peach brandy, but they're very rare, okay? Because fermenting and distilling peaches is very difficult. I love the fact that ⁓ we had gone to Copper and King, able to taste a couple of those, being able to do specific, I don't know, let's call them barrel aging and or ABV versions of those, fantastic. And then, ⁓ Also, back to our favorite Leopold, right? Having being able to taste their version of the Georgia liqueur of a peach and then their Colorado, yeah, peach as well. Very, very different. Not brandy per se, but it was definitely a good approach to seeing what a peach from a different region could bring to the table. Absolutely. And just one more quick. point about peach brandy is when we're talking about peach brandy, we're not talking about sweet peach liqueur or cheap peach flavored brandy. We're talking about taking peaches, fermenting them and distilling it. Whereas the essence of the peach and then for brandy, you're barrel aging it. It's not macerating peaches in a neutral spirit or something like that. But that was a luxury beverage that or a luxury spirit that people would have used in early versions of the mint julep. So the julep as it stands right here. It's missing one piece that I would consider it being removed from a smash What would you agree? Yeah, so the smash adds citrus Yeah Right, and then if you think about that if you added fruit and things like that berries and then you would get a cobbler Right, and then from there another version heading to our swizzle stick is in the crib and you have some tiki drinks like A swizzle like a Queens Park swizzle or a Chertrus swizzle or things like that that uses some of the same techniques there. So as we start to talk about the like the I guess the julep as a template, let's talk about the julep as bar equipment. You mentioned the swizzle stick. So let's go there. So probably the most notable contribution of the julep to like Equipment and artifacts behind the bar is the cup right? I many ways the julep has affected bar equipment more than most drinks have in terms of a unique way that like there these tools are either Continue to be used pretty much only for the julep or they were developed originally because of the julep So the julep cup typically was silver or pewter And it's partly because it conducts temperature efficiently and it allows that frost to form on the exterior. And that visual cue of making the julep, swizzling it and the frost building up, it's part of the ritual of julep making. Then we've got the julep strainer. We often see these used to make stirred cocktails, to hold back ice in our mixing glass. And in its original incarnation, the Julep Strainer, before you had straws, was a way to cut back the ice and the mint and to drink the cocktail. Because of poor dental hygiene at the time, ice might have been painful for people with weak teeth, and it kept the ice from hitting your teeth. ⁓ Again, now we don't use it that way, but we use it as a strainer for stirred cocktails. And then the final thing is the Lewis bag and the ice mouth. simple canvas bag for like crushing ice. It's part of the juleps material culture because you can't put big chunks of ice and have a julep. ⁓ So you get a canvas bag that's supposed to wick away some of the moisture as you take larger chunks of ice and ⁓ pound it like so. ⁓ This drink just doesn't exist in recipe books that shapes the tools we use behind the bar and to serve in the bar. ⁓ We mentioned earlier, I told you to hold on to it, so in that in that first iteration of ⁓ Dabney's Julep, it was shaved ice, like taking a sharp object against that big and just literally going and just shaving ice out of those big cubes or rocks or blocks, blocks really. ⁓ From there, Pebble Ice Machine Sonic Ice didn't exist, so it was taking chunks of ice or shivers of ice and then placing it into these Lewis bags and beating it into making crushed ice. And now in our modern era, we have access to Sonic or any other place that has that version of Pebble Ice or even an Opal machine. And we're able to make now Pebble Ice still doing the same thing. It's loose, small pieces that add for faster dilution, right? But they also are able to condense and be more compact into a vessel that controls the temperature even more because there's airflow, room flow with so much compacted ice. Right? And I mean, if you think about it, like your drink had three ounces of liquid in it. But yet this thing was full all the way to the very top. Yeah. And like you could ⁓ sit that quickly and be done with it and your glass looked like it's still full of ice. because that metal, it's conducting the cold well. I mean, again, if you think about this on a hot summer day, pre-air conditioning, this is pretty refreshing drink. The bar, so the Julep Strainer, we talked about that coming into here. The Lewis bag. So I guess now let's talk about where did all this go from that history to the Derby? Okay, so part of it is we need to make the connection. How do we go from like, rum and brandy and peach brandy to bourbon. Okay. Right. So in Jerry Thomas's book, the first julep recipe was actually a brandy julep, not one made with whiskey because whiskey was considered a spirit for like the lower classes. So the quality of bourbon and rye began to increase from that point on, especially like after the Bottled and Bond Act and things like that. And, you know, as bourbon and rye are increasing in quality, the phylloxera epidemic devastates the wine and brandy making industries in France. So many cocktails switch that originally had a brandy base to bourbon or rye, kind of like some people say about the Sazerac. Same thing happens with the ju- Out of necessity, they had to flip the spirit. Yep. And so it's one of those scenes where as the julep becomes more of a bourbon cocktail, it becomes more closely related to Kentucky. And so one of the hallmarks of Kentucky, of course, is the Derby. And so we've talked about how the mint julep was consumed widely well before the Derby even began in 1875, but during the 20th century, Churchill Downs, the venue that hosts the Kentucky Derby, formalized that association between the mint julep made with bourbon and the Kentucky Derby. In fact, the julep became the official drink of the Derby in 1938. Wow. That's that's actually sooner than I thought it would be. I thought it would have been all the way from the very beginning. No, I mean, it's still a relatively recent innovation. So this is post prohibition that, you know, it's the official drink. Of course, people would have been drinking Julips at the Derby, but not this. This is the drink of the Derby. And I mean in many ways, it's also a marketing thing. So like for Woodford Reserve, the official bourbon sponsor of the Kentucky Derby, those bourbon producers are leaning into the branding. I mean as you can see on their bottles here, you know, they because they're the official sponsor, they get to use the official Derby logo. They're selling more bottles like this bottle of Woodford Reserve. It is regular Woodford Reserve. Just in a special bottle. Exactly. And I mean, it's festive. People buy it. People collect these because of this connection with the Kentucky Derby. And so, you know, people lean into the branding. I know there was they've done things where like if you go to the Derby, you can buy like a $5,000 jeweler in a like gold plated or silver like silver. cup with diamond studs, something like that. So today, tens of thousands are going to be served at the Derby, right? ⁓ Supernature glasses are going to be collected like you were stating, like silver cups. You can get your, an engraved silver cup while you're there if you needed to ⁓ on the Derby day. But the Derby, as you stated, didn't invent the jewelet. They kind of canonized it. Yeah. So I mean, The julep was a popular cocktail in the 1800s, but I would argue that chances are the julep would not be as well known as it is today if it weren't for the Kentucky Derby. Leave me with some last words on that julep. So we have to remember the julep is global in origin, starting way back in the Middle East. Today it's Southern in identity. We must recognize its dependence on the labor of enslaved people who grew the mint, produced the sugar in the Caribbean, and then crafted the version of the drink that we know today in the silver cuff with the mounds of crushed ice, and canonized by 20th century marketing with bourbon producers. The julep is both agricultural and industrial. It's intimate and theatrical and it remains structurally elegant. It's simple, right? And so this weekend, if you make a julep, consider its layers of history along with the layers of crushed ice. Try the classic mint julep or try a split-based version like this prescription julep and notice how you can adapt the template along the way. I could there be such a thing as a tequila julep? I wouldn't see why not. Absolutely. And it's one of those things where you can do this many different ways, like splitting the base. And if you want to make it easier, you can take sprigs of mint in your garden or from the grocery store and muddle them with just granulated sugar or simple syrup. We use the mincer out of convenience and consistency, but this is a drink that you can make pretty easily at home. And as you make those juleps at home, please share some of your feedback with us. Let us know how goes for you. If some of your likes and dislikes, like subscribe, follow us on YouTube, Facebook, sorry, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. TikTok. That's the one. Jeez. And we're also now on audio on Spotify and Apple. Apple. And if you are old school, like some of us, me included, feel free to give us an email over at podcast at into the bar archive.com. Give us your feedback. Let us know your likes and dislikes on some of these juleps. And then let's talk about what we've got going on in the next episode. Well, Next episode, we're leaving behind the silver cups and racetrack rituals to explore the rise of the cosmopolitan. Sex and the city? Yeah. We'll talk a little bit about Sarah Jessica Parker or Carrie Bradshaw to celebrate National Cosmopolitan Day from its origins in craft cocktails to its rise as a cultural icon of the 1990s. Well. I guess we're going to get our sexy, silky, sleek pink on. You bet. So thank you for digging into the past with us here on Into the Bar-kive. Cheers.