History of mint julep

Cold and frosty to the touch, the mint julep is a delicate concoction traditionally composed of mint, sugar, bourbon and water.

The word ‘julep’ derives from an ancient Arabic and Persian drink called ‘julap’, which translates ‘rose water’.

The Oxford English Dictionary records the use of the word as early as 1400 AD to refer to syrup that was typically used as a vehicle for medicine.

That drink was made from crushing rose petals into water, but the roses were replaced with the more widely available and economic mint once the drink moved to the Mediterranean.

The julep as a drink was once taken as a form of cordial, a stimulating and invigorating medicine or beverage.

Alcohol was thereafter added and juleps have been made with a range of different alcohols including vodka, rum, brandy and others.

In the sense of an alcoholic mixed drink, it is first attested from Virginia in 1787. The word and its derivative compounds spread quickly: ‘julep drinker’ was applied to habitués of bars in San Francisco in 1859.

Prior to the Civil War, brandy or whiskey was common in a julep, but the poverty of the South after the war gave rise to the use of less expensive bourbon.

Julep spread across the American South and north to Kentucky, where the Lords of the Land of Bourbon recast it as an American drink, made with American Bourbon.
History of mint julep