The Clover Club

Ms. Vivien Gay was in town for the week and we decided to find the time to meet up over a couple of glasses of wine. Vivien besides being a friend from the wine business happens to be the importer of a particularly lovely line of wines called Solms Delta from South Africa. This wine estate, located in the historic Franschhoek valley near Cape Town was first planted to vines in 1690. In 2001, when neuroscientist Professor Mark Solms returned to South Africa and took over the run-down property, it started once again into becoming a force in the South African wine industry. The Solms-Delta wines are mostly blends of Rhone varietals and some of them also undergo the ancient method of desiccation. What is desiccation? Quite simply it is strangulation. The stalks of the bunches of both red and white grapes are clamped on the vine before harvest, thus blocking the channels carrying various components to and from the berries. While up to 40% of the water evaporates, the natural acids and grape sugars are retained, concentrating flavours and colour.

We met at a restaurant/lounge, slghtly off Carroll Gardens and Park Slope in Brooklyn called the Clover Club. This is where Julie Reiner whose credentials include the Flat Iron Lounge in Manhattan holds court, along with her partner Susan. The decor is simply fantastic and almost akin to an old boy's club from the early 20th century London and the cocktails are crazy! The Clover Club is a much needed addition to this area of Carroll Gardens. The crowd is lovely and the vibe is deliriously cozy.... These are the sort of places that keep you in Brooklyn on a winter evening and spare one the trek to Manhattan on cold winter nights.

210 Smith St.,
Brooklyn, NY
nr. Butler St.
tel: 718-855-7939