Detour
Detour Cocktail by Cocktail Detour
A collaborative detour felt exactly right to celebrate this lovely puzzle box. For the toast to the Detour Box, I reached out to my friends Joakim and Mattias from Stockholm, Sweden, who run the Cocktail Detour brand and website. I asked them if they might be interested in creating a cocktail that starts out in a familiar way, but takes a little detour, turning into something new and unexpected. What they came up with is a wonderful drink for the summer season, a light and refreshing highball that I will undoubtedly be making again for myself and my guests. They describe it best:
“Just a slight detour from the regular route can take you in interesting directions. Gin, cucumber and elderflower - a familiar formula for a good cocktail, but maybe lacking a bit of excitement. But then add the tiniest splash of smoky mezcal, and suddenly this highball is grown up. We love this, deviate ever so slightly and grand things can happen.
courtesy of Cocktail Detour
The glass we serve the cocktail in is from another detour. We went to Japan some years ago to look for beautiful glassware. Pretty soon we discovered that Japanese thin cocktail glasses are generally sold in these gorgeous wooden boxes. Of course we had to bring several of them back to Sweden, and they are amongst our most precious glassware today.
courtesy of Cocktail Detour
The gin we’re using is from a small distillery in the south of Sweden, called Barsebäcks Bränneri. It’s actually the part of Sweden both of us grew up in, before reallocating to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. A detour on its own, but we still go back to the south of Sweden ever so often.
take a detour
And we’ve just started a new detour! After ten years with cocktails, we decided it’s time also for wine in our lives, so we are now studying to become sommeliers. A detour, not a U-turn. Cocktails will forever intrigue us, but now we’re also exploring the route of wine. And we love it!”
Here’s to finding the unexpected and allowing yourself to follow a new path now and then, to the detours in life that turn out to bring you somewhere you may never have gone, somewhere wonderful. Cheers!
pleasant detours
DETOUR COCKTAIL
1,5 oz gin
0,75 oz lime juice
0,75 oz elderflower liqueur
0,5 oz fresh cucumber juice
0,25 oz mezcal
~0,5 oz simple syrup
soda water to top
Build over ice in a highball glass. Gently stir and garnish with cucumber.
explore more: