![]() ![]() That, in part, led to making corn the ultimate supreme of crops and converting non-believing Julep Junkies over to, you guessed it, bourbon. But did you know that legally speaking, bourbon whiskey has to contain at least 51% corn? Growing rye would look suspicious, but rn had all kinds of uses.Ĭorn can feed people, livestock, dragons.probably. Yep, the 18th Amendment made alcohol production and consumption illegal in almost all cases. It also didn’t help that the pesky Whiskey Tax also applied to American-made Brandy, which would make the conversion back to bourbon in the south a no-brainer at the time.Īnd then, there was that time the government tried to tell us we all had a drinking problem, and that making us quit cold turkey was definitely the best move. ![]() This epidemic infected France’s grapevines and made cognac production next to impossible. Brandy was hard to find in France, even more so across the Atlantic. To save you the Google search, it was essentially irritating ass bugs that ate A LOT of grapevines needed to make wine, cognac, etc. That switch from brandy to rye only accelerated during the phylloxera epidemic of the mid-1800s. People made do with what they had, and I’m sure there were many who preferred the new spirit. They brought their favorite Julep recipes along with then, leading to an increase in rye whiskey being used in the Mint Julep.īrandy was still probably preferred, but it was more expensive and less plentiful than rye. Free land and no tax on whiskey? Sign me up! However, word started to spread in the north that the tax was not as tightly enforced in the south, (and almost wholly ignored) especially in Kentucky.Ī great migration of sorts ensued where thousands of farmers came to settle on free land and plant rye to make and enjoy whiskey. And, in true American fashion, a rebellion against the tax took place from 1791-1794. In 1791 an Excise Tax (more notably, The Whiskey Tax) was established to help pay the massive debts that the American Revolution incurred, and Americans….were not happy.Īmericans felt betrayed by such a tax under the new regime of one President George Washington - I’m guessing you’ve heard of him. But there is a particularly interesting story as to how bourbon became the preferred base of the Mint Julep. It wasn’t until the elixir travelled from the northern to the southern United States around the early 1800’s that the recipe started to get a bit more specific, especially with the new preference for the base of the cocktail to change from rum to bourbon.įor a while, the base liquor of the Mint Julep varied from rum, whiskey, and even brandy. Mint wasn’t added for quite some time, but it was later found to aid in helping the rum go easy on the stomach when mixed together. The earliest ancestor of the Mint Julep was merely rum, water, and sugar. ![]() It was used to settle upset stomachs and also acted as an ‘antifogmatic’, meaning something to take first thing in the morning to stave off illness.Īlso used if you have a bad case of the Mondays, amiright? The first use of the Mint Julep was solely medicinal in the pre-civil war era, specifically in Virginia. ![]() The inception of the Mint Julep is a notorious fire starter as some mark the earliest mentions to be anywhere from 900 A.D (perhaps even earlier) to the early 18th century. Theodore Roosevelt once publicly claimed he once failed to finish a Mint Julep That’s right folks, take a seat, and lend me your eyeballs as I take you through a brief journey of the famed cocktail, and hopefully share with you a thing or two that you didn’t know about it before. I think we all have at least one of those.Īnd one of the most popular, rage invoking, passionately cherished, and dearly held southern staples that evokes such emotion is none other than the classic Mint Julep. Is there a recipe you would brawl over? A cherished tradition you would provoke the masses for? A way of doing things that, if averted from, you would shake a fist at your own mother? ![]()
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