Hedge fund managers have a taste for the best. So it's not all that unusual that they pony up for the best booze. Dan Dorfman chronicled a recent dinner at Chinese restaurant Tse Yang where six unnamed hedge fund BSD's ponied up for $800 shots of a rare cognac: 1863 Hardy Perfection:
The general manager of Tse Yang, one of the city's leading Chinese dining spots, Alan Chan, can attest to that with great authority. A little over a week ago, six hedge fund managers had dinner there and decided to end the evening with an after-dinner drink, which in most city restaurants, I'm told, on average runs between $7 and $15.
Tse Yang, off Madison Avenue on 51st Street near the Helmsley Palace, draws a sizable Wall Street and corporate crowd and includes among its after-dinner drinks a $15 Delamain XO Cognac.
Alas, that wasn't exciting enough for our six managers. Their choice: an 1863 Hardy Perfection, distilled from grapes harvested just before the phylloxera plague wiped out virtually all of Europe's native vinestocks. A 1.25-ounce shot of this vintage cognac ran each of the managers $800, making for a $4,800 tab for the round.
Actually, it turned out to be more that. Two of the managers liked the cognac so much they came back for an encore a couple of days later, shelling out $1,600 for two additional shots. That's a grand total of $6,400 for the two rounds.
If you're about to suggest that such sales, given the lofty prices, must happen only once in a blue moon, don't. A Tse Yang captain, Bredma Jon, tells me that these sales, especially to CEOs and Wall Street types, occur more often than you might imagine.
Taste for Booze Is Fine Among Hedge Funders - New York Sun
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