My first Saturday in May: bourbon, not horses

Once a year, on the first Saturday in May, time slows down in Kentucky to a rhyth­mic, pound­ing heart­beat. All eyes turn to a sin­gle patch of earth at Churchill Downs in Louisville, where tra­di­tion and thun­der con­verge in a two-minute horse race known as the Kentucky Derby. 

Now you might be sur­prised to learn that I am not a fan of the Kentucky Derby, nor of the horse rac­ing busi­ness in gen­er­al. Beneath the fan­fare, there is anoth­er sto­ry unfold­ing on race­tracks across our state, one that is hard­er to watch, and even hard­er to justify. 

While horse rac­ing is often cloaked in tra­di­tion and the lan­guage of sport, the deep­er truth is that this is an indus­try built not only on speed and spec­ta­cle, but on exploita­tion, suf­fer­ing, and pre­ma­ture death. A busi­ness where human prof­it and ani­mal wel­fare are often at odds. Horses are bred to be sleek and then pushed to run at a young age, before their bones are ful­ly formed. But what hap­pens when a leg shat­ters mid-stride, and the crowd gasps? 

Too often, that horse is euth­a­nized. Not because it’s the most humane choice, but because it’s the most cost-effec­tive. There is no retire­ment plan for the horse that fin­ish­es last. 

As you might guess, this is a very unpop­u­lar opin­ion in my state, where horse rac­ing annu­al­ly brings upwards of $175 bil­lion to the state economy.

But there is one thing about the Derby that I love. It’s not the bet­ting or the fash­ion or the call to the post. It’s the mint julep, the per­fect Southern cock­tail. Over 125,000 mint juleps are served at Churchill Downs over Derby weekend.

Before we get to the julep, we need to talk about bour­bon. In Kentucky, bour­bon is con­sid­ered a cul­tur­al inher­i­tance, a warm hand­shake from his­to­ry, a sweet-sour-smooth ser­mon poured into a heavy-bot­tomed glass. A birthright.

We begin with the basics, or what is known as the Bourbon ABCs: 

America. Bourbon must be made in America.

Barrels. Bourbon must be aged in charred oak barrels.

Corn. Corn must be at least 51%+ of the grains used.

Now all bour­bon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bour­bon. Over 95% of the world’s bour­bon is made in the Commonwealth, where the lime­stone-fil­tered water flows clear and sweet, the sum­mers are hot and humid, and the win­ters are cold and spite­ful, which is per­fect for aging whiskey and hard­en­ing character.

In an age of instant noti­fi­ca­tions and same-day ship­ping, bour­bon reminds us that the best things take time. It takes years, some­times decades, for the oak to alchem­ize, turn­ing raw dis­til­late into liq­uid amber wis­dom. It asks us to savor each sip.

You can sip it neat in a crys­tal glass at a five-star hotel or slug it from a plas­tic cup on a porch swing at a fam­i­ly reunion. You can nose it, swirl it, pair it with a great steak, or chase it with a Moon Pie. And it makes fab­u­lous cock­tails, from the clas­sic old fash­ioned to the Kentucky mule, which is bour­bon mixed with Ale‑8. 

Which brings us back to the mint julep. The ingre­di­ents are sim­ple: bour­bon, sug­ar, mint, and ice. But to make a mint julep wor­thy of Kentucky’s long tra­di­tion, you have to slow down. 

First, the mint must be mud­dled gen­tly, not bruised but coaxed, so its oils rise gen­tly. The sug­ar is stirred in with care. The bour­bon, rich and warm, is poured in rev­er­ent­ly. And the ice must be crushed, nev­er cubed, so it melts at the per­fect pace. Not too fast, not too slow — like a good sto­ry told under the stars. A tra­di­tion­al mint julep is served in a sil­ver julep cup, which allows frost to form on the out­side and keeps the julep ice-cold.

In Kentucky, bour­bon is a love let­ter to the land, writ­ten in corn and oak. So, raise your glass.