I’m toasting a clever puzzle within a puzzle, the “Of Mice and Mazes” box. Inside this puzzle box, which is terribly tricky to open, rests a unique pack of playing cards. Each card is has maze detailed into the design, and one maze leads you to the next, all the way through the deck. Here’s a new classic cocktail to pair with this metapuzzle, and another mouse adept at navigating the mazes. Nancy Wake was a secret agent, French resistance fighter, and special forces operative for the Allied defenses in World War II. She was so adept at thwarting the Nazi efforts and evading capture that she became known by the Gestapo as the “White Mouse”. In one of her most daring escapades, after parachuting into occupied France, she helped lead a group of 7,000 soldiers against an army of 22,000 German soldiers to victory. She received innumerable honors and awards of distinction after the war from around the world, becoming the Allies most highly decorated servicewoman and hero.

In her later years she settled in London and took up residence at the Stafford Hotel in St. James Place, a former British and American forces club during the war. She was known to enjoy her regular gin and tonic first thing every morning, sitting at her reserved bar stool at the hotel’s elegant American Bar. In honor of her death in 2011, at the ripe age of 98, Benoit Provost, the bar’s manager, created a signature drink, which has become the most popular item on the menu. The “White Mouse” cocktail features saffron infused gin, lemon, honey-rosemary syrup and champagne. It’s elusive, deliciously complex, inspiring, and devastatingly effective. Here’s to the brave heroes who fight during dark days and inspire us to find our way out of the maze.

The White Mouse by Benoit Provost

1 oz saffron infused gin

½ oz fresh lemon

½ oz rosemary honey syrup

Champagne

Shake gin, lemon and syrup together with ice and strain into a festive glass. Top with champagne and garnish with twist.

For more about the amazing Of Mice and Mazes box see:

Boxes and Booze: Of Mice and Men and Mazes