$1,000 mint juleps are for sale at this year’s Kentucky Derby

The Kentucky Derby is a near-religious moment for bourbon drinkers — but they’ll need a black card to start a tab with the high rollers this year.

That’s because the $1,000 mint julep is back.

For 10 Cs, you’ll get a beverage of whiskey, honey and muddled mint inspired by the Palace of Versailles (they had “the House of Bourbon,” after all) created by Woodford Reserve’s affable master distiller Chris Morris. The Woodford distillery lies just outside the town of Versailles, Kentucky.

Only 148 of these cocktails will be served at the May 7 race at Churchill Downs and 130 of them will be poured into silver julep cups featuring red rubies in the shape of a horseshoe and engraved with a thoroughbred. For people with even more money to burn, 18 cups will be made from gold and cost $2,500. Both are made by Louisville-based jeweler From the Vault.

Kentucky Derby 2022 Betting: Everything you need

All that cash, of course, goes to a good cause: These costly cocktails benefit Old Friends Farm, where thoroughbreds, including past Derby winners, are sent to retire in peace.

But if you can’t make the Run for the Roses at this year’s race — or don’t have a month’s pay to drop on booze and betting — the next best thing it to hit the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

Now with 18 stops, the trail has become a more organized and user-friendly experience over the last 23 years, since its launch in 1999. The bourbon trail now offers custom itineraries and tickets from its visitor center on Main Street in downtown Louisville in a building shared by the Frazier History Museum, which is dedicated to the story of Kentucky bourbon.

But for the ersatz derby experience, you’ll want to focus on the distilleries of Brown-Forman brands Woodford Reserve and Old Forester.

Woodford Reserve has been a sponsor of the derby since 2018, but has been releasing a special edition derby bottle since 1999. Meanwhile, sister brand Old Forester is the official bourbon in all the juleps that don’t cost a grand at the race and has been since 2015.

Start in Louisville, where Main Street’s Whiskey Row has brought a number of world-famous distilleries to the center of town. Old Forester has anchored the area from its home on 119 West Main St. since the 1880s.

Built around a massive 44-foot-tall, 4,700-pound copper column still, visitors get to sniff the banana aroma of the fermentation vats, watch the runs flow from the still, peep the bottling factory, learn some lore and of course try the hooch.

By the end of your journey you’ll feel as fit as a filly.

Next, travel a little over an hour east, just outside Lexington, and gaze upon Woodford Reserve’s old grey stone warehouses and distillery.

It’s the stuff of a drinker’s dreams. Founded in 1996, on the site of the the Old Oscar Pepper Distillery and later the Labrot & Graham Distillery, Woodford was one of the first whiskey makers to invite enthusiasts onto its grounds and guide them through the fermentations, distillation and barreling processes.

The brand has also meticulously preserved the site’s history, while ruthlessly experimenting with its own mash ratios, ingredients and barreling program: Indian maze? Blue corn? Heaps of rye? Why not!  

In New York, collecting or even tasting specialty bourbons is the domain of private equity bros and their ilk. But in Louisville, at the derby or in the countryside at a flagship distillery, enthusiasm goes a long way with the locals.

Chat up the right guy and you’ll be sipping something one-of-a-kind fast. That’s Southern hospitality.