This Julep loves the South
Bar’s menu and décor celebrate region’s distinct cocktail traditions
One of the first things you notice at the Julep is a brass sculpture of a graceful fairy poised within a copper trough full of crunchy pellet ice. The winged creature — a sort of patron saint of frosty cocktails, if you will — comes with a story. And as visitors to this delightful new bar on Washington will discover, everything at Julep has a story behind it.
“She belonged to the owner of the Old Blue Antique Shop. It used to sit in her home,” said Julep owner Alba Huerta who worked hard to persuade the owner to sell the statue. “She was attached to it, but I wasn’t giving up. It took a lot of conversations, but she finally sold it to me on my birthday in May.”
This high-proof house of mirth is presided over by a master storyteller. Huerta, whom cocktail enthusiasts know from her work at Anvil Bar & Refuge and the Pastry War, comes armed with local and regional scholar- ship about Southern drinks and practices. Her Julep is a story within a story — a bar dedicated to the history and craft of the Southern cocktail; a celebration of a region of America with its distinct cocktail traditions and love for specific spirits such as bourbon, rum and cognac.
There is nothing about Julep that is incidental. Everything from the design, to the cocktail menu, to the spirits stock, to the glassware, to the ice is invested with historical perspective. Even the food menu, too — oysters, seafood towers, “pantry jars” of rillettes and pickled foods — has
historical context. “With the wider distribution of ice in the South came the wider distribution of seafood,” Huerta notes.
Clearly, Huerta, who was named Bartender of the Year for 2014 by Imbibe magazine, has done her homework. She will tell you about the history of a “bounce,” a liqueur made by infusing cherries with baking spices and bourbon, when she crafts a Cherry Bounce Sour made with house bounce, Old Grand Dad 100 bourbon, lemon, bitters and egg white. Both the Armagnac Sazerac and the Creole Crusta have colorful New Orleans origins. (Her rum-based Crusta, made with a Creole shrub and dandelion bitters, comes in a glass lavishly rimmed with turbinado sugar and benne seeds, an ingredient she traces to the 18th-century rum trade.) Her Topps and Bottoms, a cocktail made with sunflower-seed-infused overproof rum, riffs on the ubiquitous Southern sunflower. And the bourbonand-mint glory that is the Julep is front and center with three rotating Julep cocktails starring each day from Huerta’s roster of julep variations.
Customers who order the Rail to Satsuma may not know that Huerta put so much thought into a cognac cocktail flavored with satsuma jelly. It not only references the mandarin trees of Satsuma, Texas, but serves as a tribute to the history of the Old Sixth Ward, a neighborhood once defined by the Houston and Texas Central Railway.
“This whole neighborhood has a connection to the establishment of the railroad on this side of town. The houses were inhabited and owned by people who transported on the railroad or worked on the railroad,” Huerta said.
Even with so much backstory at every turn, Julep is still a bar. A bar where Southern classics such as the sazerac, the julep, the Boulevardier and the French 75 are royalty. A bar where serious cocktail enthusiasts know that bartenders are both well trained and well versed. A bar meant for both simple and opulent spirits celebrations.
“Of course I want people to have fun,” Huerta said. “It’s a project that comes from the heart. It’s not contrived.”
It’s also a bar that says much about the owner and her almost obsessive attention to detail. The curlicue that adorns her menus was inspired by her investment in vintage Ladies’ Home Journal magazines. The gray color scheme and lace curtains? Her take on Southern comfort. The Gilded Age ornamentation over the bar? A bit of Reconstruction Era architectural whimsy.
The details are precisely what has made Julep the most anticipated bar of the year. And they’re no doubt what will bring national attention to the Houston drinking scene now that the bar is open.
But Julep’s storyteller has anticipated that. She’s ready to provide details galore about all facets of her pretty baby as she concocts what she says might be her favorite julep: a sparkler made with effervescent Gamay wine, cognac and mint. Pulling from a hobnail bowl stuffed with mint, Huerta launches into another story: “I have become obsessed with hobnail,” she says of the studded Depression glass. “Hobnail was invented by a guy in …”
Ah, the South!