A True Mint Julep

A repeat from an entry on my bartending blog Transmissions from Agent J at last year's Derby season:


To paraphrase Mark Twain, everybody talks about the Mint Julep but nobody ever does anything about it.

I recently read some magazine article - can't remember where now - that talked about how played-out, overrated, and overhyped the Mint Julep is. They talked to some bartender who said she rarely is ever called upon to make one, except by the occasional rube tourist at Derby time. The article also stated that although people go through the motions of having Mint Juleps for Derby, few people actually like them and they toss them aside after a few token sips for tradition's sake.

I posit that the reason these people feel this way about the Mint Julep is because they've never actually had one prepared properly. Hint: it doesn't come from a pre-made bottle, it doesn't come from a store-bought syrup, and it doesn't come from a mix. That this goes without saying should go without saying.

If you really want to do it right, follow the poetic instructions of General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. to the absolute letter. Failing that, here's my simple solution that doesn't involve simple syrup:

Granulated sugar
Powdered sugar
Fresh mint leaves
Finely crushed ice
Bourbon

Muddle one pinch of mint with the granulated sugar in a metal Julep cup. Some will tell you to just gently bruise it and not pulverize it, but I say go nuts and pound the hell out of it. The granulated sugar will help give you something to grind against.

Fill the cup to the top with finely crushed ice, fine as a Sno-Cone. Pour bourbon almost to the top, then add your second pinch of mint. It's your second pinch, that will garnish the top, that you want to just mildly bruise and not smush into pieces. Then dust the top generously with powdered sugar.

Those with bourbon-sensitive palates should note that a proper Julep, contrary to how it's commonly fixed, is essentially bourbon with a little mint and a little sugar, NOT mint and sugar with a little bourbon. If you prefer bourbon-based drinks in which you can't taste the bourbon, you might consider the likelihood that bourbon-based drinks are not for you.

Also note that a metal cup is a must - preferably a genuine Julep Cup intended for this purpose, and if it's an antique one (see image of mine above), all the better. If you're doing it in a container made of glass or plastic, don't even bother. Just have a Gin Rickey instead or something.

Alternate versions: if you're dead set on having a Mint Julep even though you don't like bourbon, may I recommend cutting the bourbon somewhat with either Barenjager (my first choice) or Southern Comfort. I suppose eliminating the bourbon entirely in favor of these beverages is permissible - what the hell, it's your drink, buddy - but the thought of it makes the purist in me all fremdschämen.

The Kentucky Colonel Cocktail

One from my bartending blog, Transmissions from Agent J:


The Kentucky Colonels have their own official cocktail, and it may come as a surprise that I have yet to try it. I do have several recipes for it in my files, but this is basically it:

2 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. Benedictine (the liqueur, not the cucumber dip)
Twist of lemon peel

Shake well. Pour over crushed ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with the lemon peel.

The term "Kentucky Colonel" is an honorary title bestowed by the governor of Kentucky. It dates back to the War of 1812 when the Kentucky Militia were called out and Governor Isaac Shelby found their services useful; he decided to appoint one of them (Charles S. Todd) an aide-de-camp on the Governor's Staff with the rank and grade of honorary Colonel. Since then, the ranks of these Colonels has swelled to many thousands, including Bill Clinton, Johnny Depp, John Glenn, Tiger Woods, and yours truly.

Sooner or later I'll get around to trying the Kentucky Colonel Cocktail, but it may have to be out somewhere and not here at home, because I just don't keep Benedictine around, and am not inclined to go out and buy a bottle just for this recipe. My next liquor store purchase will probably be St. Germain's, so maybe I'll report back here at some point with a newer and truer old-world drink for the new millenium.

(Thanks to The Tipsy Texan for the photo!)

MMX

Ten percent of the 21st century is already over. Think on that.

The arrival of a new decade, drifting out of the oughts and coming into the teens, has me thinking long and hard about - what else? - extraterrestrial contact.

Never mind that we're already swimming in a sea of invisible Lovecraftian beasties brushing up against our reality (you probably think I'm joking, don't you?) and never mind that certain microscopic critters most likely actually came here from interstellar space. I'm speaking here of more tangible, wrap-their-lunchhooks-around-you kind of aliens, which may or may not be little green men or Autogyro-piloting entities or what have you. (Some might even tell you to "Drop the Tunug" if you don't block their voices out with your Thought Screen Helmet.)

The tagline for the film version of Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 is "The Year We Make Contact". Given that all my high-weirdness detector readings are off the scale these days, I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't indeed the year that all humans finally realize (as John Titor once predicted) that we have not been living in the kind of world we've grown up thinking we're in.

With the upcoming full-throttle-firing of the Large Hadron Collider this year, some paranoid nuts - in other words, my dearest friends and associates - believe an interdimensional portal is going to be opened as a result. And something from somewhere else could end up here.

Perhaps it already has.




Our ally JLK's Ending Sentences With Ellipses blog has a great feature about the conversation between Helen Mirren and Roy Scheider about Kentucky in the 2010 film.

But when Roy says we play very good basketball, does he mean the Cats or the Cards? Most likely the Cats. But you never know. He may also have meant both, in a general, all-encompassing, Neutral Zone kinda sense.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that they still drink Kentucky bourbon in the future. Or I would be, that is, if the future were not right now.

The Labrot Family Plot

I only took photographs of these graves in Frankfort Cemetery because I thought their names were interesting, as well as their connection to Ardeche, France.


When I got home and Googled him, I realized Leopold Labrot was the Labrot in Labrot & Graham, the historic whiskey distillery whose name still appears on one of my favorite bourbons in the whole universe - Woodford Reserve. The distillery itself has been in operation since it was the Pepper Distillery in 1812. It was purchased by French wine merchant Leopold Labrot and Kentucky banker James Graham in 1878, who operated it until 1941. Brown-Forman purchased the distillery and then sold it in 1971, only to re-buy it years later.

The Old-Fashioned Cocktail

One from our Transylvania Gentlemen blog:


Calling all Transylvania Gentlemen: next time you want a sweet-n-fruity drink that is also somehow simultaneously radiating he-man gravitas, try that Kentucky creation known as an Old Fashioned. (You know, the one Cole Porter sings about in "Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please").

As Drinkboy says, "The Old Fashioned is an old drink, a very old drink". I like to imagine William S. Burroughs saying this, in exactly the same way he says in the Naked Lunch film, "America is not a young country. It is old... and dirty... and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians, the evil was there, waiting."

Supposedly, the first drink ever to be called a 'cocktail' was the Old Fashioned, and the Old Fashioned was supposedly invented in Louisville at the Pendennis Club. Supposedly. It's probably as specious a factoid as Kaelin's claim to have invented the cheeseburger, but what the heck, that's their story and they're stickin' to it. It sounds good to me and I ain't gonna squawk.

The aforementioned Drinkboy cites a book called Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett, in which it states that the Old Fashioned was invented by Col. James E. Pepper from Kentucky. Pepper was a member of the Pendennis Club, and the book says he introduced the drink to NYC by teaching the bartender at the Waldorf-Astoria how to make it. I did a little digging and sure enough, I tracked down numerous references in the New York Times to Col. Pepper regaling high society pals in New York.


The earliest example of a recipe known is in "Modern American Drinks" (1895) by George J. Kappeler. It says simply:

"Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass."

The version in Irwin S. Cobb's recipe book is a bit more complex:

"One-half piece Sugar, 2 dashes Angostura Bitters, 11/2 jiggers Paul Jones or Four Roses Whiskey, 1 slice Orange, 1 slice Lemon, 1 slice Pineapple, 2 dashes Curacao. Muddle sugar and bitters with pestle. Add cube of ice, whiskey and Curacao and decorate with fruit. This cocktail was created at the Pendennis Club in Louisville in honor of a famous old-fashioned Kentucky Colnel. I claim it was worthy of him."

But it's David Embury, in his 1948 The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, that gives the most in-depth rundown:

"Pour into each glass 1 to 2 teaspoonfuls simple syrup and add 1 to 3 dashes Angostura. Stir with a spoon to blend the bitters with the syrup. Add about 1 oz. whisky and stir again. Add 2 large cubes of ice, cracked but not crushed (see page 100). Fill glass to within about 3/8" of top with whisky and stir again. Add a twist of lemon and drop peel in the glass. Decorate with a maraschino cherry on a spear. Serve with short stir rod or Old-Fashioned spoon.

I have been intentionally somewhat indefinite about the quantity of sugar and bitters for two reasons. First, you should experiment and determine for yourself just how sweet you like the drink and just how much of the bitters flavor suits you best. Second, I have stated the recipe in terms of filling your Old-Fashioned glasses to within about 3/8" of the top and I do not know the exact size of your glasses. Tastes vary somewhat, of course, but I have found that most people like about 1 teaspoonful of sugar and 1 to 2 dashes of Angostura to each 2 ounces of whisky.

Also, please note that I have suggested only a cherry and a bit of lemon peel for decorations. You will frequently find Old-Fashioneds served with lemon, orange, cherry, and pineapple. The bartenders' manuals of the Gay Nineties were replete with illustrations of cocktails, Sours, Crustas, Smashes, Cobblers, and other drinks decorated with all the above fruits together with strawberries, grapes, raspberries, etc., according to the available supply and the fancy of the writer. At the other extreme stand those who contemptuously refer to any cocktail decoration as "the garbage." My own opinion is that fruit flavors and liquors blend exquisitely and that, for a midafternoon or an evening drink, and Old-Fashioned is greatly improved in its over-all appeal by the judicious addition of a few fruits. Fruits, however, properly belong at the end of a dinner rather than at the beginning. Accordingly, when serving Old-Fashioneds as an aperitif, I recommend using only the lemon peel with no fruit at all, or at the most, a cherry or a slice of orange.

Note that in the Old-Fashioned the only modifying agents used are the bitters and sugar. The reaction time of this cocktail is slower than that of a Martini both because of its sugar content and because the whisky is slower than gin. Don't be deceived by this. It is not a lighter drink than the Martini; it is stronger. Its action is merely delayed."

So what's the difference between an Old Fashioned and a Manhattan? Well, honestly, not much, except for the sugar, the vermouth, and the fact that most bartenders today leave the bitters out of a Manhattan. Alcoholic scholars still debate whether the cherry in an Old Fashioned should be muddled or not muddled. (I say: when in doubt, muddle.)

Brown-Forman's Big Bourbon Bottle

One of America's best mimetic water towers is at the Brown-Forman plant on Dixie Highway in Louisville: it's fashioned to look like an enormous bottle of Old Forester bourbon, and can be clearly seen for miles around.

The Dangerous Political Pull of Kentucky Bootleggers?

Justin Thompson has a scathing critique of Kentucky's bizarre new liquor tax increase in his essay "You Watch my Back and I’ll Stab Yours: How KY Lawmakers Have Started Another Whiskey Rebellion", printed in the currest edition of The Bourbon Review. An excerpt:

On April 1st of this year, the booming bourbon industry was delivered a low-blow by its lawmakers when Kentuckians were required to pay an additional 6% sales tax for the first time on alcohol. The tax was passed and quickly signed by Governor Steve Beshear in an attempt to cover the state’s 454 million dollar shortfall in the budget. So what’s the big deal you ask? Local, state and federal taxes gobble up an average of 53% of what is paid for a bottle of bourbon in the Bluegrass State which was the third-highest effective tax rate in the nation BEFORE the 6% sales tax was added according to the Kentucky Distillers Association. The timing of this tax could have not come at a worse time either. When small-business owners and retailers are doing everything they can to attract consumer traffic and stay in business, lawmakers have crippled the efforts of the 3,400+ liquor retail stores and countless restaurants and hotels who rely on liquor sales to pay bills. Not to mention the negative effect this will have on the Midwest’s largest growing tourist attraction, The Bourbon Trail, by threatening the 500,000 visitors who might not choose to visit as many distilleries because of the higher prices. There is also the competitive advantage that now has been lost to our border states who used to drive from Cincinnati or Southern Indiana into Kentucky to do their shopping for alcohol. Chances are those densely populated areas will see a reversal in business as more Kentuckians will go across the river for their booze to save a few dollars during these tough times.


Why would lawmakers make such a quick decision (it took only about a month to debate and pass the tax) even though several national and local economists believe raising taxes during a recession is a counter-productive move? First, you would have to examine the hypocrisy that is Kentucky politics. Kentucky is composed of 120 counties: 30 of which are wet and 90 that are dry. Those 30 counties include the most populated areas and enjoy the majority of the residents. Even so, there is a large portion of Kentucky that is dry and the vast majority of the lawmakers from these regions voted for the tax increase. Why are there so many dry counties in one of the largest alcohol producing states in the nation? One reason is bootleggers. In every single one of those 90 counties, bootleggers operate unbothered by the law, unregulated and untaxed. In most cases, they infiltrate the political circles and ensure that any talk of a county voting wet is squashed very fast. I grew up in one of those small dry counties and was shocked to find that alcohol was harder to score as an under-age freshman in college than it was as a freshman in high school. If you don’t believe that bootleggers have political-pull, then think about the last time the local news did a story about police busting a bootlegging operation in one of those rural counties. These dry counties do nothing to generate alcohol sales tax receipts, but they are more than happy to accept the tax-money that wet counties produce.

Did I read that wrong? Is the Bourbon Review actually stating what I think it's stating?

Kentucky Liquor Tax

A rant from myself and J.T. Dockery's Transylvania Gentlemen blog:

With the toll that the economy crunch is taking on American citizens, some cities and states are realizing that loosening restrictions on liquor is a good way to keep revenue flowing and boosting local economy.

Many cities are extending bar hours, and some places, like the entire state of Arkansas, are doing away with the "no liquor on Sunday" laws that should have never existed in the first place. According to Ben Jenkins, a spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council, states that lift the ban on Sunday sales see a significant boost in sales annually.

Jenkins also notes, "Dozens of states consider alcohol taxes, and every year most of them fail because the legislators become educated as to the effects a tax increase on alcohol would have on the hospitality industry".

Unfortunately, given the choice between loosening or tightening Governmental grip on alcohol, between increasing citizen spending or suppressing it, guess which one Kentucky chose? Yep, you guessed it.

Several economists have noted that the key to getting ourselves out of this current economic toilet is to have money continually in motion, to get people spending, to keep bills circulating, by any means necessary. Splopping yet another malodorous tax on Kentuckians, many of whom are just barely getting by right now, is a sure-fire way to suppress spending, depress the morale of citizens, slow the economy down, and generally just screw things up for everybody.

A liquor tax during more affluent times, when the economy was booming and everyone was partying, would still have been a bad idea. But to do it at a time like this when people are struggling just to stay afloat... to tell the average Joe that he has to pay more for that bottle of cheap wine or that six pack of Miller High Life, which may or may not be the closest thing to a splurge, a luxury, or a treat they ever get in their existence... well, there's a word for people who would do that to Kentucky's citizens at a time like this. Several words, actually. None of which are printable here.

The not-inconsiderable Bourbon distillers of our fair state agree. They recently protested and poured bottles of bourbon on the statehouse steps in Frankfort. And there's been some rumblings about how some distilleries are even considering moving across the border to Ohio, Indiana or Tennessee. According to Jerry Rogers, owner of multiple liquor stores in Kentucky:

I simply cannot understand why the members of the Kentucky legislature voted into office by voters who live in "wet" counties would allow another increase in the tax on alcohol after a 22 percent increase just four years ago. This tax burden has been placed on only 50 percent of the population of Kentucky.

This is just fine for legislators from "dry" counties as there is no additional tax burden placed on their constituents, ensuring their re-election. The distillers have said that they may reevaluate their stake in the Bluegrass, and they very well may. Some distillers have already moved their aging operations out of Kentucky due to taxation. It doesn't have to be distilled here to be bourbon.

When this new 6 percent tax -- which is on top of a 11 percent wholesale tax, which is on top of an excise tax -- costs Kentucky its competitive edge, not only will Indiana and Ohio shoppers stay on their side of the river, but many Kentuckians will cross the river to do their shopping.

Bourbon Falls

We recently unearthed this antique bourbon bottle that, astonishingly, still has most of its label intact after its long strange meandering mission into time. The label has swipes of mud on it, suggesting it was recovered in a bottle dig, but also has "1.15" written on it in grease pencil, as if it's spent some time on a flea market shelf somewhere along the way.

Bourbon Falls? Never heard of the stuff, but thankfully, the Earth is populated by some hardcore whiskey historians who have many of the pieces of the Bourbon Falls puzzle easily retrievable online.

As you can barely read on the red ribbon graphic at the bottom of the bottle's label, Bourbon Falls was a brand name of Heaven Hill Distilleries, just up the road a piece in Bardstown. According to whiskeymerchants.co.uk:

1783 -- William Heavenhill is born "during an Indian raid which was being waged, under the cliffs near Rowan Creek" at the site of present day Heaven Hill Distilleries.

A group of Bardstown-area investors and the five Shapira brothers, David, Ed, Gary, George and Mose, found During 1934 Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc., originally known as “Old Heavenhill Springs” distillery. The company had 12 employees at the time of its founding.

Barrel #1 was filled on December 13.1935 Bourbon Falls is the name on the company's first label.

kybourbon.com lists all subsidiary brands and lines of Heaven Hill, and sure enough, there's Bourbon Falls. But just because they're still the brandholder, does inclusion on this list mean they still make it, I wondered? I went to Heaven Hill's own site and noticed they have a section titled "Other Bourbons" that states:

Heaven Hill Distilleries, as the second largest holder of Bourbon in the world, also offers a number of other well-known and historic American Whiskey brands. Some of the larger labels include the Heaven Hill Bourbon family, Cabin Still, J.W. Dant, Echo Spring, Mattingly & Moore, J.T.S. Brown, T.W. Samuels, Kentucky Deluxe and Kentucky Supreme.

No mention of Bourbon Falls, but if they keep the flame alive on these other historic brands, even in microminimus quantities, there may yet be hope.

And then I found this. Looks like if you wanna get the real old-school Bardstown hooch, you gotta go to Japan. There's your global economy.

Moonshine

Moonshine, that other legendary Kentucky drink besides Bourbon, is a real Kentucky delicacy and not something that Al Capp just made up for “Li’l Abner.” I’m continually amazed at how many city-folk I encounter who thought moonshine was just a weird urban legend, or simply a colorful euphemism for whiskey.

Here’s how it’s made:

Assemble your ingredients: corn meal, sugar, water, yeast and malt. Freshly stone-ground corn meal is better than crap you find at the supermarket, and course raw cane sugars like turbinado are better than processed-to-death white sugar. For common folk-remedy “spring tonic” variants, you can add various herbs and roots such as ginseng and the psychoactive sassafras root. Some have even used wormwood or mugwort, making moonshine spring tonic truly the “Appalachian Absinthe.”

Combine the ingredients in a large container until thoroughly mixed. This is what is known as your “mash.”

Place the mash into a “Still” (home distillery) and turn on the heat to 175 degrees. The idea is to heat the mash to the vaporization point, and collect the steam vapors rising from it in the still’s copper tubing. This condensation then collects in a separate container, and this, my friend, is moonshine; the mystic elixir that Snuffy Smith called “corn squeezin’s,” the medicinal balm that Pogo Possum called “Aunt Granny’s Bitter Brittle Root,” the holy grail that Grandpa Jones called “Mountain Dew.” The soda pop of the same name, by the way, used to depict cartoon hillbillies on its bottles before the days of political correctness.

(The recipe I provided here is just for your information, mind you. Strictly for sake of argument. Just making conversation. Don’t actually do it. And if you do, research it online first and make sure you know how to build and operate a still. But don’t do that either.)


Poorly produced moonshine can not only be horrible to drink, it can also be toxic. A common practice back in the day was to pillage auto parts for assembling a still, such as the radiators and coils. Needless to say, this was unsafe and led to moonshine that contained traces of lead poisoning. This hazard obviously doesn’t apply to the majority of moonshine being produced, of course, but that didn’t stop the Government “Revenooer men” from exaggerating the risks in their anti-shine literature of the 40s and 50s. Even today, I found a current scare-site on the web that warns “About 80 percent of all adult lead poisoning deaths are related to moonshine consumption”. Personally, I find this claim to be ludicrous, since there’s obviously far more people exposed to lead paint and lead pipes still in public use out there in the world than there are moonshine drinkers.

The confusion with whiskey comes from the fact that Kentucky Bourbon is at least 51 percent corn-based rather than rye-based, and literary references to "corn liquor" might mean either Bourbon or Moonshine. Whiskey and bourbon have a different fermentation process, must be aged in special oak casks, and usually contain a blend of grains.

The most famous portrayal of moonshine in film was probably the 1958 film Thunder Road, in which the great Robert Mitchum played a bootlegger from Harlan County, Kentucky who drove a supercharged Ford with a secret compartment tank for transporting moonshine into Tennessee. The iconoclastic film, presenting Kentuckians flouting laws and eluding cops in high-speed car chases, was the grandfather of all Smokey and the Bandit -type films that followed. For better or for worse.

(top photo: confiscated moonshine stills in Breathitt County.)