A $1000 Mint Julep

Saturday marks the annual running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, and it also marks an opportunity to shell out one thousand bucks for a mint julep. Yep, a cool grand for the drink served by Woodford Reserve. If you’re calculating, that works out to about $50 a sip. Mint juleps have been the signature drink at the Kentucky Derby for decades, and this fancy version was a way to capitalize on that tradition while raising money for charities like The Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund and The Robby Albarado Foundation.

For ten Ben Franklins (or one Grover Cleveland), the expensive, yet sweet cocktail contains choice Kentucky bourbon, ice made of water from an aquifer in the wilderness of Central Norway, Turkish mint grown near the Euphrates River, and sugar cane cut and crushed by hand from Sainte Marie in the Reunion Island of France. It all comes served in a gold-plated cup with a sterling silver straw and an oak box. The special gold cups will be honoring  jockeys, with 99 cups in all representing the 99 jockeys that have ridden in the Kentucky Derby since its inception.