Each year almost 120,000 juleps are served at Churchill Downs over the two-day period of the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby. This isn’t just by chance though nor something that isn’t annually re-established the cocktail has been specifically promoted by Churchill Downs in association with the Kentucky Derby since 1938. The how or why of it is inconsequential – they are now intrinsically linked on a cultural (and financial) level and over the course of the event, hundreds and thousands of glasses are consumed. For us Brits, while this can at first seem like a random occurrence, it’s best explained thus: Juleps are to the Derby what Pimm’s is to Wimbledon. To Americans, the connection needs no explanation. One of the earliest mentions of "Iced Julep" appears on May 4, 1807, in an advertisement for the Wig-Wam Gardens in Norfolk. By the turn of the century the drink’s change in status was already underway, but one of the key factors that propelled it was when Virginia taverns began including ice-houses (possibly for the iced cocktails too) in their infrastructure in the 1780s. The move from medicinal to recreational happened over time. I then prescribed her an emetic, some opening powders, and a mint julep." Further evidence of mint julep as a prescription drink can be found in 1784 Medical communications: "sickness at the stomach, with frequent retching, and, at times, a difficulty of swallowing. While this may seem like a bold choice of morning pick-me up, look closer and you’ll see that it is (at least in part) due to the drink’s medicinal origins before the turn of the 19th Century.Īt that point, the term "julep" was generally defined as a sweet drink and English juleps, as opposed to later American mint juleps, were primarily medicinal and only lightly alcoholic. He wrote that the Mint Julep is a “dram of spirituous liquor that has mint steeped in it, taken by Virginians of a morning”. One of the drink’s first print appearances was in 1803 in John Davis’ book Travels of Four and a Half Years in the United States of America. The Mint Julep is a drink we consider to be an afternoon or evening tipple, but it was once considered as something to casually start the day with…
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