New NYC life chapter, 80s Bordeaux dinner

[jal]

Last week, after a lousy "Red Tide" summer in Sarasota, we bought a small pied a terre on the upper west side of Manhattan, ten minutes walk from Lincoln Center; a tiny unfurnished box in the sky with no wine storage and spent the whole week buying furniture and necessities.

So yesterday at friends in Brooklyn we had a few delicious wines with the first home cooked meal in a week.

We started with two Champagnes:

Pierre Péters Cuvee de Reserve Blanc de Blancs; delicious, crisp, well structured, yeasty, lemony, with some stone fruit, a perfect aperitif.

2006 Pierre Péters Champagne Grand Cru Cuvée Speciale Blanc de Blancs Les Chetillons; much better than the previous one, crisp, refined and elegant with the same good structure and yet with the same flavor profile. No signs of fading or even maturing.

1985 L'Evangile; right from the start, a great nose of graphite, berries and earth with mature complex flavors of cherries and chocolate. Delicious 95

1983 Lynch Bages; corked, darn!

1983 Pichon Lalande; the nose on this is intoxicating, leather, earth, tobacco, a bit less complex than the l'Evangile but still so refined, balanced and tasty 93

1996 François Cazin (Le Petit Chambord) Cour-Cheverny Vendanges Manuelles Romorantin; this one is new on me, not as sweet as I thought it would be, vibrant with good acidity and crispness. I'm not sure I would be drinking it as a dessert wine, it may be too nuanced and needed some coaxing to get going but I like it, some peaches and quince on the palate, good length. 90

A good evening with friends, it's good to be back in the city. I missed it.

[DavidG]

Congratulations Jacques, on your new place!

[JimHow]

Wow! That’s great news.

[jal]

Congratulations Jacques, on your new place!

Wow! That’s great news.

Yeah! Come visit!!

[stefan]

Nice homecoming dinner for you and Jill.

Where do you keep your wine?

[Jay Winton]

Glad you're back in the Big Apple. We hope to be up your way in the near future or come to DC!

[William P]

Congrats on the new place.

Bill

[AKR]

I'm assuming you'll be there less than six months a year!

[jal]

Thanks guys

Nice homecoming dinner for you and Jill.

Where do you keep your wine?

Good question, no idea at this point. All I brought to dinner yesterday was a bottle of Champagne I had just purchased.

I'm assuming you'll be there less than six months a year!

Oh, absolutely. Florida is the tax base!

[Tom In DC]

Congrats on (yet another!) new place, Jacques!

I'm assuming you'll be there less than six months a year!

Arv, if you follow J and J's travel schedule on Facebook, you'd know they'll almost never be there!

[jal]

Tom, LOL

[Blanquito]

Terrific, good to have you and Jill back in the NE (where you belong!). If you don't buy (yet another) place in Colorado, NYC is the next best thing.

Some great wines you had too.

[AKR]

Congrats on (yet another!) new place, Jacques!

I'm assuming you'll be there less than six months a year!

Arv, if you follow J and J's travel schedule on Facebook, you'd know they'll almost never be there!

I have been researching The Facebook technology but am reluctant to adopt it, lest it end up a fad, like The MySpace.

[JimHow]

Ha my cousin the big equity finance guy gets audited in New York every year, they get his cell phone records every year.

[AKR]

Yes. I'm sure you're all over this. I only got the residential audit once, the first year when I moved from NYC to CT.

And I had no markers for that audit - no property, no NYC job, no cars / license / voting anything

CA and NY are far more likely to audit filers (and non filers) than the IRS.

They are revenue hungry states, and willing to expend efforts on enforcement.

[jal]

Yes. I'm sure you're all over this. I only got the residential audit once, the first year when I moved from NYC to CT.

And I had no markers for that audit - no property, no NYC job, no cars / license / voting anything

CA and NY are far more likely to audit filers (and non filers) than the IRS.

They are revenue hungry states, and willing to expend efforts on enforcement.

I keep a spreadsheet with every day spent in every location.

We also don't have any income, just some dividend that I try to keep to a minimum and some capital gains.

The idea is to be in NY 2-3 months a year.

I imagine that auditing us will be a waste of time for the tax guys, but if they do, then I'm not worried at all.

[Tom In DC]

Jacques' records for tax purposes:

JacquesTaxRecords.jpg (50.6 KiB) Viewed 2083 times

[jal]

ROTFLMAO
Tom, you’re on a roll...

[Nicklasss]

Good selection of wines and to bad for the Lynch.

So you're back in the Big Apple... that will give me a reason to go back. And believe it or not, I stopped in NYC on the way back from Cape May, in 2012, and Simone (she was 4) still remember it quite well and she's looking forward to go back.

Nic

[TomRippe]

Hi Jacques and All,

I've attended several BWE dinners in NYC but you all probably don't know me. I am longing for more/another dinner! If you would like to attend a dinner please put it out there and let's put it together!

Thanks,
Tom Rippe

[Comte Flaneur]

Jacques congratulations on your move back to the Big Smoke/Big Apple. A ‘large one’ to that.

[jal]

Thanks Ian, I’ll see you soon hopefully
Tom, I don’t think I’ll be in NYC before the spring, maybe by then, I’ll have a few bottles in the new place.

[dstgolf]

Jacques,

That's a huge change forced back to NYC. Last year you and Jill were so pumped with your condo on Lido Key and you are far from alone how to deal with the plague of red tide and blue green algae both of which are going crazy along with the population explosion in Florida. All three issues have us questioning where to hang our winter hats in the next couple of years. We're still open to the east coast with traffic issues worse but no red tide ...yet!! Once the colder weather hits the red tide will dissipate and not an issue for the snow birds but year round residents can't stay close to the beach without question. Lido/Longboat were ghost towns I'm told this summer!! A tragedy of over population, too much nitrogen/phosphate effluent, heat and no solution in sight does not bold well for west coast Florida. The business owners in the area must have suffered big time this past season. We love the Sarasota area but this now annual recurring theme has us and many others questioning the future.Good luck to you and Jill with your new split venture and your welcome back dinner sounded fabulous shy of one bad LB.

[AKR]

If youre in Northern FL I'm not sure what is worse - the red tide or the Crimson Tide

[jal]

That is right, Danny. The Florida beach life is great but when the beach is off limits, we (I especially) felt stir crazy. The NYC apartment is an escape for these times as well as for culture and reconnecting with our social circle.
Hopefully, this winter in Sarasota will be as good as the previous one, otherwise we may need to brave the cold Northeast.
BTW, you are correct, businesses are suffering very badly, St Armand's Circle was a ghost town for most of the summer and fall.

[JimHow]

What the hell is going on down there in Florida.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70I_kADGQY

[jal]

Like I said, an ecological disaster!

[JimHow]

My cousin and her husband have their insane mansion out in Longboat Key, such s breathtaking spot, I gotta check in with them.

[dstgolf]

Shocking video Jim but reality in Florida not just for the short term I'm afraid. It has really thrown a monkey wrench into our 3-5 year retirement plan where we saw ourselves wintering in Florida. Now we have a big?? as to where to hang our winter hats and not sure where that will be. Our thinking was it was just a gulf problem and east coast Florida was spared but obviously from the video a much bigger disaster that's going to get worse before better especially with the lax environmental laws along with exploding growth in Florida.

[jal]

Extremely concerned but patient is how I would describe my feelings about this issue right now.
The one comforting aspect is that the impact is now well known and documented.
Politicians in the last elections, both Democrats and Republicans, ran on an environmental platform meant to mitigate red tide, blue green algae blooms, and Lake Okeechobee runoffs. Obviously, I am being slightly optimistic and I still wouldn't trust politicians as far I could throw them, especially Florida politicians.
We shall see.

[DavidG]

I hope they take some positive action, though I have no knowledge of what that might be or how long it would take to have an impact.

The Gulf Coast, and Sarasota in particular, is one of my favorite places to visit. We thought surely the red tide issue would be resolved by this fall but when it wasn't we switched our winter plans this year to southern California. If it isn't on fire.