The Missing Prosecco: A New York City Story

This can only happen in NYC

The City of New York has a building ordinance called Local Law 11, described as follows:

To keep buildings safe, owners of properties higher than six stories must have exterior walls and appurtenances, such as balconies, inspected every five (5) years – and they must file a technical façade report with the Department.

Recently, the building in which I live was inspected by our engineering firm and it was determined that we needed to inspect the building—particularly the balconies—and that repair work needed to take place.

So, starting in July, a pedestrian bridge (also known as a shed) went up all around the sidewalk of our building, scaffolding was deployed, and a team of workers began to prepare the façade and mainly the balconies. It’s a complicated process so I’ll spare you the details. It’s sufficient to say that we could not use our small balcony in the summer or fall and it took until mid-December for the work to be completed.

Despite the slight inconvenience, I was in awe of the men riding the scaffold each day to do the job. Imagine going up and down a 31-floor building, doing this for more than eight hours a day, and getting on and off to work on balconies. I get dizzy and wobbly getting on a step ladder to change a bulb. There is not enough money for me to even contemplate getting on a scaffold—including what Diageo paid for Casamigoes.

Now on to the story…

One day last week, our balcony was finished and I opened the door, partly because I wanted a close look at the work (fabulous) and mainly because I could, for the first time in six months. I didn’t stay there long; it was freezing out.

It just so happens that on that particular day we had a small group of friends coming over for a cocktail party. I bought what I needed from the nearby wine and spirits shop—hey, it’s NYC and there’s one every other street. Included in my order was four bottles of prosecco… Mionetto Prosecco to be exact. Sparkling wine is fun, celebratory, easy to serve, and some folks prefer it to other drinks.

My order arrived but the problem was how to keep the prosecco cold; the refrigerator was full of food and I could only get two bottles in. How to keep the other two bottles cold was a bit of a dilemma.

I know, I thought, now that the balcony was accessible, I’ll do what most of my neighbors and I do in the winter and store two bottles out there. If you live in an apartment in the city, you don’t have room for an extra refrigerator, so a balcony, or even a fire escape, when the temperature is low enough, will do the trick.

Two bottles in a plain black plastic bag were put outside to keep cold. But different types of alcohol freeze differently. An 80 proof (40%AbV) spirit will not freeze but a wine at 8 to 14% AbV will first turn to slush then freeze after just an hour or two. I had visions of frozen sparkling wine and shooting corks taking out neighbors’ windows.

So, around fifteen minutes before our guests were due to arrive, I went out to the balcony to check on my cache.

The balcony was empty.

No booze. Gone. Disappeared.

I live on the 11th floor of the building so, unless Spider Man was in the upper east side and decided to climb up to my balcony and take the prosecco, there was only one other explanation—the workers took it.

I called the building superintendent, a good friend, and laughingly told him the situation. He immediately deduced that they were on a scaffold going down and finished for the day, so they must have thought the wine was a gift for them. Hmmm. Made sense to me. “Never mind,” I said. “Let them enjoy it.” His reply was a terse, “Let me see what I can do.”

I shrugged and immediately called the liquor store and, reminding them what a good customer I am, I begged them to send up two more bottles asap.

Ten minutes later the doorbell rang. Two gentlemen were standing outside. One was the delivery guy from the store and the other was one of the building employees. Each had a bag containing two bottles of prosecco. We now had six.

The aftermath

I felt really badly about the building taking the assumed gift away from the workers. These fellows worked long and hard and a couple of bottles of booze was small additional compensation. But my friend the super thought he was doing me a favor. I shouldn’t have called him.

What really pissed me off was that of the six bottles of prosecco, only one was consumed. A couple bottles of Eagle Rare Bourbon, seemed to be the preferred libation.

As we say in New Yawk, go figure.