Stephanie's Custom Hats

05/05/2024

A few highlights from Derby 🐎 150.

05/04/2024

05/04/2024

It is a beautiful morning in Louisville, Kentucky

05/04/2024

Winner of the 2024 Kentucky Oaks Thorpedo Anna

05/03/2024

Derby Week 2024

05/02/2024

Happy Derby 🐎 Week!

04/29/2024

A Mint Julep is the quintessence of gentlemanly beverages.

It is not the product of formula. It is a ceremony and must be performed by a person possessing a true sense of the artistic, a deep reverence for the ingredients and a proper appreciation of the occasion.

It is a rite that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician nor a yankee. It is a heritage of the Old South, an emblem of hospitality and a vehicle in which noble minds can travel together upon the flower-strewen paths of a happy and congenial thought.

Go to a spring where cool, crystal-clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip up a little water at the source. Follow the stream through its banks of green moss and wildflowers until it broadens and trickles through beds of mint waving softly in the summer breeze. Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots. Gently carry them home. There select a bottle of good bourbon, mellowed with age, yet vigorous and inspiring, arrange a row of silver goblets.

In a canvas bag, pound ice as fine as snow, keep it dry, do not let it degernate into slush.

Into each goblet, put a heaping teaspoonful of granulated sugar. Cover with spring water. Slightly bruise one mint leaf and leave the spoon in the goblet. Then pour elixir from the bottle until the goblets are about one-fourth full. Fill the goblets with snowy ice, sprinkling in more sugar and embellish copiously with mint.

Then comes the delicate operation of frosting. By proper manipulation of the spoon, the ingredients are circulated until nature encrusts the whole in a glistening coat, harmoniously blended and eminently appropriate for honorable men and beautiful women.

When all is ready, assemble your guests on the porch or in the garden, then the aroma of the juelps will rise heavenward and make the birds sing. Inhale a deep breath and sip the nectar of the gods.

Being overcome by thirst. I can write no further.

Lt. General
Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.
May 1935