Summer Is Julep Season!

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

The mint growing in my small, bachelor patio garden is out of control. I mused last evening it was time to make some Mint Juleps, a perfect representative of the first and most important of bachelor food groups: booze. Mojitos---or as I like to call them, Joshitos---are also a delicious, hot weather minty cocktail, but the Mint Julep is by far the more refreshing summer treat.

Many years ago, just after moving to Baton Rouge, I discovered a very old recipe for a Mint Julep that I thought captured the slower spirit of the South. I found a letter written by Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. to a certain Major General William D. Connor, superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, dated March 30, 1937. The letter is charming and, I confess, is much better than anything I could write on the glory of the Julep, so for this week's column, I yield to the ghost of a southern gentleman:

“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 asked how he was able to carve the image of an elephant from a block of wood. He said 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 a 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 rite 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 a happy and congenial thought. So far as the mere mechanics of the operation are concerned, the procedure, stripped of its ceremonial embellishments, can be described as follows:

“Go to a spring where cool, crystal clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip up 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 breeze. Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots and gently carry them home.

“Go to the 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.

“Into a canvas bag pound twice as much ice as you think you will need. Make it as fine as snow, keep it dry and do not allow it to degenerate into slush. Into each goblet put a slightly heaping teaspoonful of granulated sugar, barely cover this with spring water and 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 a small amount of sugar as you fill. Wipe the outside of the goblets dry, and embellish copiously with mint.

“Then comes the delicate and important 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 glistening 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 goblets to your lips, bury your nose in the wind, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods.

“Being overcome with thirst, I can write no further.

“Sincerely, Lt. Gen. S.B. Buckner, Jr., VMI Class of 1906."

Now that, my friends, is a recipe! Celebrate your summer in style, and go forth and make ye a Julep!