If It’s Horse Racing Season, It’s Time For The Maryland Mint Julep

Baltimoreans’ mint patches are springing to life, a harbinger of the mint julep season which is upon us with the 150th running Saturday of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, followed several weeks later by the 149th Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course. That being said, for many Marylanders the venerable Maryland Hunt Cup, which raced across the Worthington Valley Saturday, is not a mere dress rehearsal, but the actual observance of Opening Day and the happy marriage of crushed mint, simple syrup, rye or bourbon and LOTS of crushed ice stuffed into an ancestral silver julep cup from Kirk or Stieff, the once legendary Baltimore silver manufacturers. While generals Grant and Lee may have buried the sword at Virginia’s Appomattox Court House in 1865, the War of the Juleps continues to this day as the great liquid battle between Maryland rye and Kentucky bourbon, and which should be employed in a julep. And there are numerous codicils to the julep making process.