It’s Mint Julep Month in Louisville and I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect julep for weeks now. If you live here and you’ve never had a mint julep, you are contractually obligated as a Louisville resident to have at least one a year. You may as well make it a good one.
I spend a lot of time chatting with my bourbon peeps on Twitter. Last week one of them was at The Village Anchor for a Mint Julep Contest and was telling me all about it. The winner of the contest made what he called a “Carpetbagger Julep” that featured Laird’s Apple Brandy along with the traditional muddled mint simple syrup and bourbon. When you go buy a Carpetbagger Julep at the Village Anchor, half of the $25 goes to the service-industry charity Apron, which supports local service-industry folks when they can’t work.
Saturday night I stopped in The Village Anchor for a mint julep before heading off to a Bluegrass show. I told the hostess all I wanted was to sit outside and drink a mint julep, so she showed me to a table on the lower patio. This place is so great they even hand out blankets on chilly nights.
The bartender came out to talk me through my mint julep order. At one point I had three people around me talking juleps. It was the most high-maintenance drink I’ve ever ordered. But if you’re going to do it, do it right. In the end I decided on a traditional mint julep with Eagle Rare bourbon. It was phenomenal.
We ordered a few appetizers to snack on while I sat on the patio and sipped my cocktail. Everything was as delicious as it was beautiful, and the service was unusually good. It was the kind of place you expect that everybody knows everybody but they still welcome strangers.
The Village Anchor is one of the many wonderful stops on the Urban Bourbon Trail. Their food menu was extraordinary, and their bourbon menu was expansive. The next time you need to do Citizen Bourbon Ambassador training, stop by and get your passport stamped. Then Tweet me @LouGirl502 and let me know what you had.
Photos Courtesy of Maggie Kimberl. Right cover photo courtesy of the Village Anchor's Facebook Page
