The Quintessence of Gentlemanly Beverages. . .

My own guide to making mint juleps is Walker Percy’s 1975 essay on bourbon, with the addition of a more modern way of powdering the ice. The Better Half of the O’Cayce household has alerted me to another recipe / essay, this one up at the Kentucky Derby website (and linked to the title of this post). I’m going to copy it here as worthy of later reference, but I’m going to continue putting all my sugar in the bottom of my glasses. (I had briefly considered freezing sugar-infused pucks of ice for shaving, but abandoned the idea for two very good reasons. First, I don’t want to deal with cleaning up the sticky snow as it melts all over the kitchen counter. But second, and more importantly, I like pulling up grains of sugar in varying amounts as I sip my julep through a straw. Each sip has a slightly different flavor.)

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The Quintessence of Gentlemanly Beverages. . .

-Lt. Gen. S.B. Buckner, Jr.

Major General Wm. D. Connor
West Point, N.Y.

My Dear General Connor:

Your letter requesting my formula for mixing mint juleps leaves me in the same position in which Capt. Barber found himself when 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 only be described 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 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 wildflowers until it broadens and trickles through beds of a 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. In a canvas bag, pound twice as much ice as you think you will need. Make it fine as snow, keep it dry and do not allow to degenerate into slush.

In 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 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 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 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 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,
Lt. Gen. S.B. Buckner, Jr. *
V.M.I. Class of 1906


*Killed in Okinawa, 1945
Promoted Posthumously to full General, July 1954