Last week I took a holiday wine class at Paris’s L'Atelier des Chefs. I drink a lot of wine, but with little discretion. Whether it's this year's Beaujolais from the corner alimentation generale, or something a little more aged from Nicolas (a liquor store as prevalent here as Dunkin’ Donuts is in Boston), I will happily take a glass in hand. But since moving to Paris, I've decided to become an ever-so-slightly more knowledgeable enthusiast. The class was a success on several fronts: I learned the seven basic steps to wine tasting, avoided the chunky deer pâté without being detected (sorry, I'm not so French yet that I can eat Bambi), and -- the best part -- I discovered the most brain-erasing dessert wine (it's 17% alcohol) I've ever had in my life.

One of Paris' coolest boutique design hotels, Hôtel Sezz, somehow ended up smack in the 16th arrondissement—which, with a bounty of residents who wear 19th-century-style scarves and boat shoes without any hipster irony—is as if 60 Thompson were on Sutton Place. And yet, it works. With a central location in a residential neighborhood, Hôtel Sezz is a chic oasis amid classic, stone-architecture surroundings. The hotel’s bar, La Grand Dame, is one of the few Veuve Cliquot bars in the world, and the only one in Paris. The name comes from the champagne house's best vintage (La Grand Dame is to Cliquot what the much-more-marketed Dom Pérignon is to Moët et Chandon). Actually, there's not even a real bar here; the approach is super-personal, with the barman servicing the handful of small tables individually. We asked our mixologist for the evening, Pubba Kannangara, to craft us an improvised champagne cocktail. What he came up with was something strong but slightly sweet, with neon-green Midori and a punch of dark-red griottes (French sour cherries) turning things Technicolor. Thanks to the bubbles, an extra vodka kick, and Christmas-shades-on-drugs color scheme, we deemed it perfect for a rowdy holiday party. In fact, the drink was such a hit that Pubba's going to add it to the menu—once its name has been picked.

Secret supper clubs are nothing new in NYC (Whisk and Ladle; Jack; A Razor, A Shiny Knife), but they’ve yet to cross the Atlantic and make it over here in Paris. Perhaps it’s because the French care more about keeping traditions than being in-the-know, or because culinary speakeasies make no sense to people who never lived through Prohibition, or maybe it’s that the French just don’t need the help of hidden spots to create a mysterious romance (what with sites like the Opera House right outside the Metro, and that je ne sais quoi running through their veins, they can’t get away from it). But there is one secret supper club in Paris -- run by a young American couple -- and it’s a dining experience that tops all the others.

Perhaps attracted by the free samples of booze, you may have already visited Brooklyn Brew Shop’s stand at the Brooklyn Flea in Ft. Greene on Saturdays or in Dumbo on Sundays. The shop’s young, entrepreneurial owners -- Erica Shea, 25, and Stephen Valand, 23 -- started selling their DIY beer kits after Erica went home one Thanksgiving and spotted her dad’s home brewing equipment. “I thought it would be a fun winter activity,” she says, “so I dragged it back to my boyfriend’s -- and we’ve been making beer ever since.” It takes some time to make a batch, so she recommends having friends over for a brewing party; then, after the jug “hangs out for a couple weeks while the yeast does the rest of the work,” you can invite everyone over again to sample it. Right now, Brooklyn Brew Shop is working on their new fall recipes, to debut at the beginning of October. There’s a Pumpkin Dubbel -- “you rim the glass in cinnamon and sugar ... it tastes like dessert” -- and “a deadly Belgian triple,” says Stephen. “It’s light but, at 10 percent, highly alcoholic.” If you can’t wait until then to start experimenting, an autumn-worthy chocolate maple porter kit (it comes with everything you need to make a batch, or you can just opt for the grain, hops, and yeast) is out on their website now.

As a follow-up to our flower-arranging conversation with Lea Ann Wells, floral designer at Williamsburg home and garden store Sprout Home, we sat down with shop owner Tassy Zimmerman to discuss indoor plants for urban dwellers. Sprout has tons of experience catering to citified folk, and Tassy -- with her background in art -- doesn’t just fall back on ”small” as a solution. She always keeps design in mind, stocking up on cool-but-practical items like rootless air plants and low-light maidenhair ferns. She shares with us some intriguing houseplant possibilities for city apartments.

“What do you do for a living?” “Where do you live?” “What did you study?” We all know the usual icebreakers. A more creative question -- and sometimes a more revealing one -- is: “What’s your favorite smell?” So rarely is the answer SJP’s Lovely, or Gaultier’s Le Male. More likely, with a bit of reflection, the response comes along the lines of “west Texas, where I grew up” or “my boyfriend’s skin” or even “gasoline, lavender, and Bounce dryer sheets.” Christopher Brosius, the “nose” who founded Demeter (and left before it started doing all those bizarre Jelly Belly-flavored scents), has made this literal take on scents the ethos of his company, CB I Hate Perfume. His range of accords -- “single scents that capture very specific smells” -- runs from Basil (Sweet, Holy, and Bitter varieties) to Mint Tea to Doll Head.

Just because you’re a dude doesn’t mean you can’t have flowers in your house. Or maybe you’re a woman who’s sick of roses and peonies and wants an arrangement both genders of her guests can appreciate. We challenged Lea Ann Wells, the floral designer at arty Williamsburg garden store Sprout Home, to create a one-of-a-kind arrangement that fits our ultra-picky bill. After a day at the flower markets, she came back with her arms full of fig branches, artichokes, croton leaves, magnolia branches, crocosmia, lucadendrums, acorn branch, iresine, and agapanthus -- all of which went into this darkly gorgeous, lush arrangement ($150, including the smoke trunk vase). How did she choose each element? “Flowers most often are feminine, with soft scents and fluttery petals,” says Wells, “but certain ones read more masculine in shape, color, and size.”

Contemplating whether restaurants are indeed the new night clubs—Exhibit A being Minetta Tavern, with its “packed room, loud music, flowing booze”—got me thinking about the same concept on a DIY level: how home dinner parties can turn into home dance parties. For mixmaster tips I turned to DJ Jordan Kessler. Keith McNally himself contacted Kessler about setting the mood for his aforementioned youngest joint, as well as for creating new playlists for one of his old downtown standbys, Schiller’s.

"I want to be associated with not doing what people want me to do," said Sabina Sciubba, the seductive Italian-German lead singer of Brazilian Girls, as she flicks a lighter on stage at Studio B during Friday's party for the club's new rooftop level. Her multilingual, electro-lounge performance, along with a gamine outfit of red tights under a see-through tutu, an Obama T-shirt, and white plastic sunglasses, literally brought down the upstairs crowd.

Normally, Flavorpill tells the alcohol-inclined what events are worth going to. Turns out, they throw pretty decent bashes themselves. Take, for instance, the monthly One Step Beyond dance parties at the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center. "You know you're in for a good time," says Flavorpill's VP of Talent Relations, Lynnel Herrera. Before the warm-weather museum parties start up (think Summer Sessions at Cooper-Hewitt) and Cai Guo-Qiang's galloping, taxidermied wolves are still limiting capacity at the unbelievably crowded Guggenheim First Fridays (where the sole bar is always difficult to get to and nobody really dances anyway), check out OSB's next event—indie techno artist Matthew Dear on April 25th from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m.