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Loganberry Julep
To one quart bottle of loganberry juice add a handful of fresh mint. Steep for two hours and then strain. Add a quart of Apollinaris and serve with raspberries and a sprig of mint in each glass.
A cold-steeped mint infusion topped with mineral water — closer to a punch than to a true julep. Two details decide the outcome: the strength of the mint and the temperature at the moment of serving.
- ApollinarisA naturally carbonated German mineral water, widely bottled and sold in the United States before and after the First World War. Any well-chilled sparkling mineral water or club soda stands in; something lightly mineral rather than aggressively salty suits the fruit best.
- Loganberry juiceThe loganberry is a blackberry-raspberry cross that was a Pacific Northwest commercial crop in this period, sold as bottled juice under brand names like Loju and Phez. Bottled loganberry juice is now a specialty item; unsweetened blackberry juice, or a blackberry-raspberry blend, gives the same tart-dark profile.
- A handful of mintRead this as about a cup of loosely packed leaves and tender stems for the quart. Bruise them lightly between the palms rather than muddling them hard — crushed mint in a two-hour steep turns grassy and slightly bitter.
- Steep cold, in the refrigeratorTwo hours at room temperature in a sweet fruit juice is an invitation to fermentation off-flavours, so steep covered and chilled, then strain through a fine sieve or a double layer of cheesecloth.
- Add the sparkling water lastCombine only at the moment of serving, over ice. Mixed in advance the carbonation is gone within the hour and the drink goes flat and syrupy.
- SweetnessBottled loganberry juice of the period may well have been sweetened; modern unsweetened juice diluted with an equal volume of soda will taste thin and sharp. Have a simple syrup at hand and adjust after mixing, an ounce or two at a time.
- YieldTwo quarts of finished drink, roughly eight glasses once ice, berries and mint take up room.
This reads like the non-alcoholic drinks that filled American books and hotel and soda-fountain lists around the arrival of national Prohibition, when something was wanted to put in the glasses. The borrowed name is the point: a mint julep meant spirits, mint and crushed ice, and calling a fruit-and-mineral-water cup a julep let the dry drink keep the social shape of the wet one — the same tall glass, the same sprig. The loganberry was a going commercial concern at the time, grown on a scale in Oregon and Washington and bottled as juice; its raspberry-blackberry tartness stood up to dilution in a way that plain fruit syrups did not. Apollinaris, an imported German mineral water, was a fashionable mixer of the era and appears often in drink books on both sides of the Atlantic.