[People with mint juleps at the 1964 Kentucky Derby]
The Kentucky Derby is as much about romance as it is about tradition. I don’t mean swooning and starry-eyed romance, but Romance, the big-R kind, thick with nostalgia and echoes of days gone by. The whole experience of the modern Kentucky Derby—with beloved anachronisms like big hats, old songs, and a syrupy-sweet drink you either love or hate—is a cultural time machine that whisks its attendees into history.
Can’t you just feel the humid afternoon air, cut by the scent of mint and the sound of clinking ice?
Kentucky’s hallowed spirit, Bourbon, is the foundation for her favorite potable, the mint julep. Like many traditions, the origins of the mint julep and its connection to the Kentucky Derby has been mythologized widely, but here are a few of our favorite fun facts about the history of Derby’s signature cocktail.
1. Mint Juleps did not originate in Kentucky, and the idea of the “julep” is older than even the United States of America.
The word was first used in the Middle Ages, referring to medicinal drinks—such as rose water—taken to stave off illness and promote good health. Even the English poet John Milton (1608-1674) wrote about juleps “…with spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed.”
The mint variety of the julep is an American innovation, first popularized in the coastal south of the Carolinas and Virginia. Mint juleps were the good Southerner’s morning constitutional, a soothing dram to start the day. But they were also prescribed by physicians for various ailments before the idea of anti-inflammatories emerged.
In an 1863 letter in the archives of the Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill, a concerned woman writes to her mother about her ailing brother’s condition: “He has been extremely feeble for several days—partakes very little, only beef tea and a mint julep four times a day.” Thanks, doc!
