Looking for Black-owned wine and spirits in NYC? Well, Happy Cork can help. Co-founder Sunshine Foss stops by Cheddar News to give us a taste of some of the wines on her shelves. 

Between Bells

Cheddar News Tastes Some Wine With Happy Cork

welcome back Friends between Bells with corals and shadow. It's officially august but that doesn't mean summer's over just yet. And one wine shop in Brooklyn wants to keep you hydrated with some good drinks all month long. Happy cork opened their doors back in 2019 and since then has evolved into a destination as the largest selection of black and minority owned wine and spirits. And we love this. Now. During now is Sunshine Fox, co founder of Happy cork. Welcome welcome. Thank you for having you're gonna walk us through why? These brands are the perfect perfect for the summer and going into fall. Absolutely. So first of all thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here. But yes we are going to be trying some black owned wine and spirits. Um We actually are the largest supplier of minority owned women owned black owned wine and spirits and we're in the country all the things we love. So we're starting today with a beautiful selection of champagne. Okay which we definitely have to try because it's black women owned. Okay what's the name of this one? So this is La Pera earlier. It actually means Rusty Rabbit. Um And the producer of this is actually located in the U. K. But she's from the US. So we are sampling some international very amazing. Let's give it a try. But while we're trying this, I'm curious what sort of in your opinion makes the perfect summer cocktail here because I think of something that's cool and because it's hot and crazy outside cheers Guys cheers were drinking but what in your opinion, makes a perfect summer cocktail. So I think anything that is to do with sparkles bubbly and delicious, so anything I think that is just refreshing sparkles bubbles, We have like created some amazing cocktails from all over the place. Um not only using like some of the most unique, like we've done ice cubes with strawberries in them, which we just pose the other day. Um but we, we try to create as many like refreshing cocktails as possible. So yes, this is perfect. Okay, you've also got something called a favorite summer cocktail called the Prosecco lemonade. Why is this drink? Perfect for summer because when you think of lemonade, you think of summer, you think of anything, so that is not it. We actually have that that was made from um cocktails with whiskey um and it is definitely one of our favorites. You can see the ice cubes with the strawberries inside of them and it's also lemonade ice cubes and then you just pour your Prosecco over it. We call it a day, it's the easiest thing. So you get like your nice ice cube tray and there's the recipe for our viewers right there to see it and look just four ingredients right there, which is now one thing that's super interesting about you, you didn't have a background in the, in the liquor business when you got into this, what inspired you to start Happy court because I can, for me personally, like not knowing this would give me so much anxiety to start a business on like this. So for me, so I tell people the wine and spirits industry found us, it is something definitely that is, I never went into it as this is my dream, this is my world, but it found me because we purchased the building and there was no one that wanted to rent the space because we are on a side street. So I knew I had to bring people to to the space that you own the building. We own the building there. Yes, yes, I was gonna say there's so many celebrities right now from Lebron James Kendall Jenner, they're all jumping into the wine liquor business. Do you feel it's becoming oversaturated with celebrities? We do have a nice assortment of celebrity brands in the store from your mary J Blige. Lebron James, john Legend has a beautiful collection. But I think um the reason why everyone's going into it is it's something that is just now hot and trending, but I think for us, we try everything before it comes into the store. So not only are you putting your name behind it, but it has to be something that you can stand behind and I think where it gets kind of convoluted is the fact that like some celebrities are just saying, oh yeah, just get this Tequila, I have no idea what I wanna try, I wanna try this blue wine that you have. So let's try this blue wine. So this is a motion of, this is one of our favorites in the store because it's actually an organic, naturally created. This is the world's first and only organically made blue wine. So there's no additives in here. This is the color of the wine. He made it for his father that his father's favorite color was this particular blue and again, four years in the making, What do you do to make it? So this is a combination of two grapes frozen. This is the short version, he's gonna give the whole a scientist, but he knows the full on story, but it really is two grapes frozen fermented combined and this is the color you get and this is organic, wow, that is so interesting. I've never had a blue wine before ever in my life. It's exactly like balanced with your body's level. So the blue doesn't taste like a white wine. It is. So it's like a sauvignon blanc kind of verdejo? We call her savvy B Yes, yes, also really big on helping the community and helping other business owners. Absolutely. Why is it so important for you to sort of uplift a lot of these other businesses in your neighborhood. So for us, I think we, so we, during the pandemic, we were deemed essential and so essentially it still is, it's definitely super essential. But for us it had to be if we're essential we're gonna make everybody else essential. So we started carrying a ton of different accessories to um teas from Brooklyn tea and local businesses. And you also saw a lot of businesses grow within the pandemic. And we wanted to make sure we were able to highlight that. And your store, by the way, we're seeing the inside of it now. So cute! So shoot how it's organized! Sunshine! We love everything. Happy. Happy Call Summer. It's not indian. Summer is not done. We're here, we're drinking blue wine champagne. We're here Sunshine. Thank you so much for joining us, the co owner over at and co founder over at. Happy for