From Bardstown to Brooklyn
Charles Cowdrey reports on a one-woman crusadeto bring Kentucky’s finest in to the Big Apple
LeNell has changed the way people drink in this part of Brooklyn,â says Alex Haskell, manager of MiniBar, a cosy drinking establishment as diminutive as its name implies.
âLeNellâ is Tonya LeNell Smothers, proprietor of LeNellâs, a wine and spirits boutique where the emphasis is on hard-tofind wines from small producers and American whiskey.
âI wanted to feature American whiskey,â says Smothers, a petite young woman whose inflections honour her Alabama roots.
âNobody was spending much time with it in New York and it was an excuse to get my hands on a lot of new things to drink.â LeNellâs, located in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, is an idiosyncratic store designed to be cosy and unintimidating. Instead of the usual arrays of bland shelves and stacked cases, merchandise is displayed in antique bookcases and armoires. As you would expect in a âboutiqueâ the focus is on personal service. Customers come to LeNellâs for recommendations and they usually buy what she suggests.
The Red Hook neighbourhood where LeNellâs is located, at 416 Van Brunt Street, is one of the oldest sections of Brooklyn, the New York City borough at the tip of Long Island across the East River from Manhattan.
The Dutch were here first and named the place Roode Hoek in 1636. By the 1850s it was one of the busiest ports in the country. Long a bare-knuckled neighbourhood of docks, dockworkers and dockworker bars (think Brando in On the Waterfront), it gave us Al Capone and gav.....
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By Charles K. Cowdery
Section : American Whiskey
Page number : 48
