I’ve been researching, making and writing about vintage American drinks for 25 years. During that time, many of them have come back into general use. But when The Vault, the fantastically high-end speakeasy tucked away somewhere in Las Vegas’s Bellagio hotel, asked me a while back to make some drinks there as a part of their Liquid Legends series, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to trot out one that hasn’t: the original Mint Julep. This was America’s first luxury drink. In its heyday, back before the Civil War, it was generally made not with bourbon whiskey, but with old French brandy, vintage Port and Madeira, rich Jamaican rum and various other deluxe wines and spirits. It was the pinnacle of the bartender’s art.
The so-called “Hailstorm Julep” was developed in the 1820s by the bartenders, largely African-American, who served at the various hill-country “Springs” where rich Virginians escaped the summer heat. The drink’s name comes from the extraordinary amount of ice packed into the glass. It was a bartender’s showpiece, and the fanciest, most delightful form of liquid air-conditioning in the cocktail kingdom. If you serve these out in the heat and humidity, let them sit for a few minutes first and the water in the air will freeze on the outside of the glass.
Hailstorm Julep—Step 1: The Mint Syrup
In a pint glass, dissolve 2 teaspoons of sugar in a tablespoon of water. Add 6 mint leaves and press lightly with a muddler.
Step 2: The ‘Fine’ Ice
Bartenders used to prepare this with the aid of an enormous wooden mallet and a canvas coin sack. Failing those, lay a clean, dry dishtowel on a hard surface that can take a lot of banging. Arrange about a dozen and a half normal-sized ice cubes on one side of the towel in a single layer and fold the rest of the towel over them. Then whack them as hard as you can with the bottom of an iron skillet, a mallet, a hand-sledge, whatever. The goal is to reduce the ice to almost a powder much finer than the crushed ice you get from a machine. Fill the glass with this all the way to the top.
Step 3: The Booze
Add 2 oz of XO- or at least VSOP-grade cognac or Armagnac, 1 oz of 20- or at least 10-year-old Tawny Port and 1 oz of well-aged Jamaican pure pot still rum, such as the Hampden 8. Stir this gently and add more ice to make a little mound above the rim of the glass.
Step 4: The Garnish
Carefully slide 5 or 6 sprigs of mint into the glass, turning it into a little forest. Nestle a couple of raspberries among the mint and add a straw. Sip slowly and be contented.
David Wondrich is widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on cocktail history and one of the founding figures of the modern craft cocktail movement. A James Beard Award-winning author and editor-in-chief of The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, Wondrich has spent decades uncovering the forgotten stories, recipes, and drinking traditions that shape how we drink today. His influential books include Imbibe!, Punch, and most recently, The Comic Book History of the Cocktail.