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Walker Percy, Mint Juleps and the Derby

This is just one of the great quotes in Walker Percy's essay on Bourbon, called Bourbon Neat. If you haven't read the blog long maybe you don't know that Percy's writings introduced me to the sweet elixir. His flawed characters always seemed to have a bottle nearby. And when I read his essay on Bourbon (though a bit dated) I could still relate to what he said:

"But, as between these evils and the aesthetic of bourbon drinking, that is, the use of bourbon to warm the heart, to reduce the anomie of the late twentieth century, to cure the cold phlegm of Wednesday afternoons, I choose the aesthetic. What, after all, is the use of not having cancer, cirrhosis, and such, if a man comes home from work every day at five-thirty to the exurbs of Montclair or Memphis and there is the grass growing and the little family looking not quite at him but just past the side of his head, and there's Cronkite on the tube and the smell of pot roast in the living room, and inside the house and outside in the pretty exurb has settled the noxious particles and the sadness of the old dying Western world, and him thinking: 'Jesus, is this it? Listening to Cronkite and the grass growing?' "

Or this one:

"The joy of bourbon drinking is not the pharmacological effect of the C2H5OH on the cortex but rather the instant of the whiskey being knocked back and the little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine in the cavity of the nasopharynx and the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime—aesthetic considerations to which the effect of the alcohol is, if not dispensable, at least secondary."

And finally, if you've ever celebrated something that took a lot out of you, wrestled with the mystery that is life, or simply won the big pot after risking just about everything -- you should like this one:

"Then imagine William Faulkner, having finished Absalom, Absalom!, drained, written out, pissed-off, feeling himself over the edge and out of it, nowhere, but he goes somewhere, his favorite hunting place in the Delta wilderness of the Big Sunflower River and, still feeling bad with his hunting cronies and maybe even a little phony, which he was, what with him trying to pretend that he was one of them, a farmer, hunkered down in the cold and rain after the hunt, after honorable passing up the does and seeing no bucks, shivering and snot-nosed, takes out a flat pint of any Bourbon at all and flatfoots about a third of it. He shivers again but not from the cold."

But this post is really about a drink synonymous with this week's Kentucky Derby, the Mint Julep. Here's what Walker had to say about his favorite Julep recipe.

"Reader, just in case you don't want to knock it back straight and would rather monkey around with perfectly good bourbon, here's my favorite recipe, "Cud'n Walker's Uncle Will's Favorite Mint Julep Receipt.

You need excellent bourbon whiskey; rye or Scotch will not do. Put half an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampen it with water. Next, very quickly—and here is the trick in the procedure—crush your ice, actually powder it—preferably in a towel with a wooden mallet, so quickly that it remains dry, and, slipping two sprigs of fresh mint against the inside of the glass, cram the ice in right to the brim, packing it with your hand. Finally, fill the glass, which apparently has no room left for anything else, with bourbon, the older the better, and grate a bit of nutmeg on the top. The glass will frost immediately. Then settle back in your chair for half an hour of cumulative bliss."

So anyway, enjoy the Derby and drink a damn good and old Bourbon (or many) neat or in a Mint Julep.

Cheers!

You can read Percy's entire essay below.