Recipe

Shelby Drink Your Juice

A Steel Magnolias–themed cocktail for all the Shelbys out there—and Clairees, Truvys, Ouisers, Annelles, and M’Lynns

Photo: Courtesy of North of Bourbon


As Clairee Belcher says in Steel Magnolias, “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize”—and, perhaps, to mix cocktails. For those astute Southerners who enjoy both the classic dramedy and a stiff drink, the lauded Louisville restaurant North of Bourbon offers an ideal sipper: the fruit-forward Shelby Drink Your Juice. 

North of Bourbon—which John T. Edge included in G&G’s August/September 2022 “Appetite for Travel” story on twenty-five dining destinations worth the drive—also makes a mean cocktail. The Shelby, though, is personal. 

For twenty years, co-owners Daniel and Stacy Holyfield had a toy poodle named Shelby. She rode along with the husband and wife on vacations, including to New Orleans, where she would perch atop bars the Holyfields visited. She also starred in any barbecue or crawfish boil, football Sunday, or pool party the Holyfields threw, events often spent with their best friends and their North of Bourbon co-owners, the brothers “Uncle Eric” and “Uncle Brad” Jennings. 

“Drink the juice,” is, of course, a famous line from Steel Magnolias, said by mama M’Lynn (played in the film by Sally Field) when her daughter, the diabetic Shelby (Julia Roberts), has a hypoglycemic attack. The Holyfields relate that their friends used to say “Shelby drink your juice” to one another, to encourage each other to “drink up and pick up the pace.” They named Shelby the poodle after the phrase, and then the cocktail—which features the classic Kentucky ginger soda Ale-8-One—after her, following her death.


Ingredients

  • Shelby Drink Your Juice (Yield: 1 cocktail)

    • 2 oz. Old Forester 100 proof bourbon

    • 1 oz. fresh lemon juice, strained

    • ¾ oz. fresh orange juice, strained

    • ¾ oz. passionfruit syrup

    • 2 oz. Ale-8-One

    • Dehydrated lime slice, for garnish (optional)


Preparation

  1. Combine first four ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a Collins glass, then fill the glass with ice. Top with the Ale-8-One and garnish with the lime. 


Amanda Heckert is the executive editor of Garden & Gun and the editor of the magazine’s book Southern Women. A native of Inman, South Carolina, she previously served as the editor in chief of Indianapolis Monthly and as a senior editor at Atlanta magazine. She lives in North Charleston with her husband, Justin, and their dogs, Felix and Oscar.


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