The 133rd running of the Kentucky Derby is only 26 days away, which means the bartenders at Churchill Downs and your local Kentucky-themed dive are already busy preparing the giant vats of Mint Julep mix that give the drink a bad name. A much better recipe was handed down to me last summer by Maker's Mark's master distiller during a tour of the bourbon's landmark distillery down the road from Louisville in Loretto. His recipe, which works best for a pitcher of Juleps, went something like this:

1. Wrap a large fistful of fresh mint tightly in cheesecloth. Pour enough bourbon (preferably 90 proof, and preferably Maker's if you want to minimize the burn) into a bowl in which you're able to submerge the mint.

2. Let the mint soak for five or 10 minutes. Remove the mint from the bowl, and wring it dry into a pitcher coated along the bottom with sugar or simply syrup (how much depends on the degree of your sweet tooth). Doing so allows the mint to slowly infuse the bourbon, a process that's helped along when you crush the mint by wringing it.

3. Repeat steps one and two -- submerging the mint and wringing it dry until the mint has soaked up much of the bourbon in the bowl. Then add the remaining bourbon (assuming you're pouring from a 750 ml bottle) and stir to dissolve the sugar. Garnish your glass with a mint sprig and add club soda or seltzer to sufficiently cut the potency of your drink. And there you have it. The exact measurements are fungible, but the wringing of the mint yields an essence so powerful that guests at our Mint Julep party last summer could smell it three floors below...

Read more of Greg Lindsay's travel blog, IN TRANSIT.