It has long been claimed that the Mint Julep as stirred more controversy and indeed caused more fist fights than any other drink. The easiest way to experience this is to visit Kentucky, sit in a bourbon drinkers bar and innocently ask “How do you make the perfect Mint Julep?”

That would also be a good time to leave and move on to the next bar…

A letter dated 30 March 1937, from Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. to Major General William D. Connor, perfectly illustrates just how passionate the good people of Kentucky are about this drink. The letter reads as follows:

My dear General Connor

Your letter requesting my formula for mixing mint juleps leaves me in the same position in which Captain Barber found himself when he asked how he was able to carve the image of an elephant from a block of wood. He replied that it was a simple process consisting merely of whittling off the part that didn’t look like an elephant. The preparation of the quintessence of gentlemanly beverages can be described only in like terms.

A mint julep is not the product of a formula. 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. It is a right that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician, nor a Yankee. It is a heritage of the old South, an emblem of hospitality, and a vehicle in which noble minds can travel together upon the flower-strewn paths of happy and congenial thought.

So far as the mechanics of the operation are concerned…Go to a spring where cool, crystal-clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip p a little water at the source. Follow the stream through its banks of green moss and wild flowers until it broadens and trickles through beds of mint growing in aromatic profusion and waving softly in the summer breezes.

Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots and gently carry them home. Go to a sideboard and select a decanter of Kentucky Bourbon, distilled by a master hand, mellowed with age, yet still vigorous and inspiring. An ancestral sugar bowl, a row of silver goblets, some spoons, and some ice and you are ready to start. In a canvas bag, pound twice as much ice as you think you’ll need. Make it fine as snow, keep it dry, and do not allow it to degenerate into slush.

In each goblet, put a slightly heaping teaspoonful of granulated sugar, barely cover this with spring water. Slightly bruise one mint leaf into this, leaving the spoon in the goblet. Then pour elixir from the decanter until the goblets are about one-fourth full. Fill the goblets with snowy ice, sprinkling in small amounts of sugar as you fill. Wipe the outsides of the goblets dry and embellish copiously with mint.

Then comes the important and delicate operation of frosting. By proper manipulation of the spoon, the ingredients are circulated and blended until Nature, wishing to take a further hand and add another of its beautiful phenomena, encrusts the whole in a glittering coat of white frost. Thus harmoniously blended by the deft touches of a skilled hand, you have a beverage eminently appropriate for honorable men and beautiful women.

When all is ready, assemble your guests on the porch or in the garden, where the aroma of the juleps will rise Heavenward and make the birds sing. Propose a worthy toast, raise the goblet to your lips, bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance, and sip the nectar of the gods.

Being overcome by thirst, I can write no further.

Sincerely,

S. B. Buckner Jr.

The recipe I like to use is as follows:

6-8 Mint leaves

2 oz/60 ml Bourbon Whisk(e)y

1 bar spoon Sugar Syrup (2:1)

For instructions on what to do next, read the above letter again…

Note on Mint:

The Mint with the highest amount of menthol (menthol is what gives you that cool sensation in your mouth) is Pepper Mint and this is one of my recommendations for a great Mint Julep.