• Oxford American dedicates some space to some particularly wonderful Southern cheese.  Sweet Home Farm in Elberta, Alabama is a particular favorite of our very own Arts Editor, Brannon.  She grew up just miles away in Daphne, but has yet to share any with me.

• I had a birthday recently (28 — keeping 30 steadily at bay), and a friend, knowing my predilection for that venerable Southern cocktail sent me this, along with an excellent bottle of bourbon.  I look forward to enjoying it this weekend.  Now, if only I could find a poem about the Old Fashioned (I enjoy mine with rye, however — is that heresy?)

• Some of our traffic comes from people searching for a cocktail called a “Yellowhammer,” and we’d love to know what one is.  After consulting not one but two bartending manuals (why I own those is a different story), the only information I could find is this, and I disapprove.  Being an Auburn man, I would like to see a signature cocktail not related to that unfortunate cheer.  Leave recipe suggestions in the comments, and any variation on The Alabama Slammer is grounds for immediate disqualification.

• My adoration for Bloodshot Records knows no bounds.  Though not Southern themselves (Chicago), much of the music their label puts out (they describe it as “Insurgent Country”) is Southern in origin.  From the indie rock of Missouri band Ha Ha Tonka to my favorites Trailer Bride, Bloodshot’s playlist is formidable indeed.  Here’s a particular favorite from Scott H. Biram.  And no, I’m pretty sure that mustache is not ironic.

Paul Elie at Commonweal sheds some light on Flannery  O’Connor’s tumultuous personal intersection of intellectualism, Southernism, and Catholicism and just how difficult it is to keep all 3 balls in the air without letting at least one drop.

• Christopher Benfrey reviews Brad Gooch’s new Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. Typical TNR — lengthy but well worth it.

• Well into June, Florence, AL designer Billy Reid gives us a suit for the season. This is the best kind of attire — the sort best paired with a whiskey, a rocking chair, and a well dressed woman.  Speaking of which…

• The Old Fashioned, the aptly named cocktail all but extinct in contemporary watering holes, is making a comeback. Well, it’s not — but it deserves to. The Cocktail Spirit shows us how to drink like a gentleman.

Shown here as the Lord intended

And that’s William Alexander Percy’s recipe. From his incomparable memoir Lanterns on the Levee comes the only recipe one will ever need for that perennial summertime cocktail:

Father and General Catchings and Captain McNeilly and Captain Wat Stone and Mr. Everman would forgather every so often on our front gallery. These meeting must habitually have taken place in summer, because I remember Mother would be in white, looking very pretty, and would immediately set about making a mint julep for the gentlemen — no hors d’oeuvres, no sandwiches, no cocktails, just a mint julep. After the first long swallow — really a slow and noiseless suck, because the thick crushed ice comes against your teeth and the ice must be kept out and the liquor let in — Cap Mac would say: “Very fine, Camille, you make the best julep in the world.”

She probably did. Certainly her juleps had nothing in common with those hybrid concoctions one buys in bars the world over under that name. It would have been sacrilege to add lemon, or a slice of orange or of pineapple, or one of those wretched maraschino cherries. first you needed excellent bourbon whisky; rye or Scotch would not do at all. Then you put half an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampened it with water. Next, very quickly — here was the trick in the procedure — you crushed your ice, actually powdered it, preferably in a towel with a wooden mallet, so quickly that it remained dry, and, slipping two sprigs of mint against the side of the glass, you crammed the ice in right to the brim, packing it with your hand. Last you filled the glass, which apparently had no room left for anything else, with bourbon, the older the better, and grated a bit of nutmeg on the top. The glass immediately frosted and you settled back in your chair for half an hour of sedate cumulative bliss. Although you stirred the sugar at the bottom, it never all melted, therefore at the end of the half hour there was left a delicious mess of ice and mint and whisky which a small boy was allowed to consume with calm rapture. Probably the anticipation of this phase of a julep was what held me on the outskirts of these meetings rather than the excitement of the discussion, which often I did not understand.

In short, you don’t make them with syrup, they don’t resemble a damned mojito, and no self respecting Southerner-with-a-capital-S would drink one out of those godforsaken silver goblets they show at the races. Get yourself a highball glass, some mint, and for God’s sake, some bourbon, and enjoy an afternoon as your forebears intended.