The first Saturday in May is the Kentucky Derby, and the Kentucky Derby means one thing in a glass. The Mint Julep has been the official drink of Churchill Downs since 1938, and on Derby Day they serve somewhere around 120,000 of them. That’s a lot of mint.
But here’s the thing about the Mint Julep — it’s a drink that deserves your attention well beyond the first weekend of May. It’s one of the oldest American cocktails, with roots going back to at least the early 1800s when Southern gentlemen were reportedly drinking some version of it as a morning pick-me-up. Which, honestly, tracks.
The Julep is a simple drink. Bourbon, mint, sugar, crushed ice. What makes it great — or not great — is almost entirely execution. The right ice, the right technique with the mint, the right glass. Get those three things right and you’ve got one of the most genuinely refreshing drinks in the American canon.
Maker’s Mark and the Julep
Maker’s Mark has been the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby since 1999, which is either a great piece of trivia or a reason to choose something else depending on your disposition toward corporate partnerships. I’ll leave that call to you.
What I will say is that Maker’s makes a good Julep. It’s a wheated bourbon — wheat in place of rye in the mash bill — which gives it a softer, sweeter profile that plays nicely with the mint and sugar without a lot of rye spice getting in the way. At 90 proof it’s approachable and it doesn’t overwhelm the other flavors. There’s a reason it became the Derby bourbon.
Want more complexity? Woodford Reserve is the other Derby stalwart and brings a little more depth. On the budget end, Larceny Small Batch is another wheated bourbon that makes an excellent Julep at a more agreeable price.
The Mint — Handle With Care
The mint in a Julep is not muddled the way you’d muddle mint for a Smash or a Mojito. The goal here is to express the oils without bruising the leaves, which means even gentler handling. Add the mint leaves and simple syrup to the julep cup and press — don’t twist, don’t grind — with your muddler just enough to release the aromatics. Three presses, maybe four. Then you’re done with the mint until garnish time.
The garnish mint matters too. A big, full mint bouquet packed into the cup and dusted with powdered sugar isn’t just for show — it’s what you smell with every sip, and that aroma is half the experience of drinking a Julep. Pack it in there generously.
The Ice Is Not Negotiable
A Mint Julep served over anything other than crushed ice is technically a bourbon and mint drink. The crushed ice is what makes it a Julep — it creates that frost on the outside of the cup, it chills the drink to a temperature that makes it feel like air conditioning in a glass, and the rapid dilution is part of the structure of the drink rather than a flaw.
A traditional pewter or silver julep cup is the correct vessel here — the metal conducts cold beautifully and frosts up dramatically. But a rocks glass with plenty of crushed ice works fine. The Lewis bag and mallet are your friends again.
