My love for eating bbq has been around for a long time. I still remember the first time I tasted real, slow-cooked bbq. It was at a small lunch counter type place not far from the interstate in the middle of North Carolina. It was love at first bite. Like a first kiss (from the hot girl you’d been eyeing for a long time, not the heifer you kissed on a dare), the intoxicating sight, smell and taste of that Q still lingers in my memory. While I ate plenty of Q after that, it would be a number of years before I started cooking my own. That started innocently enough when my wife bought me a little electric “bullet” smoker that she thought I would have fun making beef jerky on. It was a gift she would soon regret for the rest of her life. From those modest beginnings behind a small apartment in Richmond, Virginia I taught myself the art and science of Q. The equipment and the locations have changed through the years, but the sight of smoke billowing out of a stack at the end of a smoker still gives me chills.

After retiring as a highly sought-after male model and being sidelined from competitive ice sculpting by a recurring shoulder injury sustained in my 2nd year with the Calgary Stampede of the Canadian Football League, I needed an outlet for my creative and competitive energies. After dabbling with an underground curling organization and racing lawn mowers in a semi-professional league in the mid-west I heard about competitive BBQ. Once I learned a little more about it and realized it was essentially a 24 hour tailgate centered around cooking Q, I was in.

The best part of the competition is right after the judge’s meeting until the first meats go on the cooker. All of the hard work is done – the site is set up, the meat is prepped, the cook strategy is on the board – and there is no fire to tend yet. This is the down-time when the bevies flow a little freer, the stories get a little longer, and generally the really stupid stuff happens. But the real reason this time is great is because of the time I get to spend with my brother and buddies, all Buckner Brothers at heart – and watch them do the stupid stuff I previously mentioned.

Without a doubt it is the mint julep – the official beverage of BBBBQ. But not just any julep. This is crafted with care from a special pre-civil war Buckner family recipe: the finest aged bourbon; mint from a south facing field picked before the dew escapes just before sun-up; pure cane sugar from pre-revolution Cuba; and just a splash of melted glacier water.

one bite at a time.