The Kentucky Derby is coming up.
While I understand this means very little to anyone that didn’t grow up in Louisville, that ramblin’est of ramblin’ river cities, it’s worth noting anyhow. Being the secular high holiday that it is, and the singlemost important, inescapable fact of living in Louisville, our thoughts inevtiably drift towards the homeland this time of year.
Our thoughts also turn to bourbon, which is itself the singlemost important, inescapable fact of celebrating Derby. Louisville is a city that thrives on ingenuity, of creating something from nothing. Slint, wooden baseball bats, open-face sandwiches, new forms of tobacco products that will kill you smokelessly.
(It’s a little-known fact, even today, but you know the practice of wearing a ratty sweater to a show and staring at your feet while the band plays? That was literally invented in Louisville in 1986. Before then, people all over the world danced at shows. They didn’t know there could ever be another way. Louisville led the way. That is ingenuity.)
I am reminded of this ingenuity every time I go home and spend any time in a kitchen. Virtually every friend and family member there is absolutely nuts about using bourbon to create new cocktails. My friend Katie is now perfecting her recipe for the Hillbilly Julep, which I’ll post as soon as she gives me the go-ahead to do so. The Kentucky Eyeroller, the Pickled Rockefeller…all of these were created in Kentucky kitchens by bored youth motivated by ennui, repressed creativity and scant resources.
Our far-flung correspondent and imaginary construct Mumblelard reminded us of this type of ingenuity when he referred yesterday to a recipe for a whiskey sour he created using common household items, similar to the ones he quaffed in his youth at Stache’s/Little Brother’s, a venue in Columbus, Ohio not far from Louisville (and where I once saw The Gossip play):
Stache’s Whiskey Sour for Floyd*
- Load one of Meemaws rocks glasses with ice.
- Put in a Jigger and a half of Old Crow Bourbon Whiskey
- Squeeze in one lemon wedge and discard.
- Lightly sqeeze a second lemon wedge and add to drink.
- Top with Sunny D to taste.
- Stir
- Add one maraschino cherry and a teaspoon of juice and let it find its own way through the drink (do not stir)
- Enjoy
*I drink my bourbon on the rocks or neat and my coffee black.
So this is all a long-winded way of saying this: in honor of Derby and the spirit of bored, kitchen-based Kentucky ingenuity, I am proposing a tumblelog bourbon cocktail competition. Starting, like, now. And ending tomorrow afternoon, I guess. So it’s ready in time for Derby.
Send your best original bourbon-based cocktail recipe to me at andysturdevant@gmail.com, or post it in the comments section. The winner will receive a Derby-specific prize of one kind or another. I will post the best ones here, and hopefully unveil Katie’s hillbilly juelp as well.
It’s short notice, I know, but that is what Kentucky ingenuity is all about. You’ve got to make it work. Good luck, y’all.
