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I must admit I didn’t quite get the Clover at first. At home I brew at near toxic strength, so the lighter-bodied stuff that comes from it seemed insipid. But after a half dozen or so cups it really grew on me–the individual top flavors and nuances are really enhanced by the process (for more on the wonders of this machine see Louisa Chu’s Chow report).
“It’s all the discussion over here,” Intelligentsia marketing director Marc Johnson told me. “Our internal message boards are on fire, baby.” Johnson and sales director Paul Rekstad cautioned that they had very little information about what was going to happen, so that anything they told me was pure speculation. But, they figured, eventually the Clover would become exclusive to Starbucks stores. “It makes a lot of sense for them not to make this available to the broader market,” said Johnson.
