An Upper East Side duplex maisonette by Central Park is on the market for $11.99 million — and it once housed a grand wine collection that was the subject of a custody battle in an epic sour grapes divorce.
The 4,300-square-foot, five-bedroom, 4½-bath unit at 812 Fifth Ave., between East 62nd and East 63rd streets, was owned by foodie and financier Roger Yaseen.
His divorce from his first wife, Janet — the current seller — made news when she corked their agreement to give him access to their vast four-figure bottle wine collection, valued at $500,000 total back in 2001.
The two were married from 1961 to 1997.
Janet didn’t cut off visitation rights to the wine until 1999, the year Roger remarried the late TV correspondent and producer Barbara Conroy. The case was settled out of court and the collection auctioned.
The home opens to an entry gallery with handmade Parquet de Versailles floors and a dramatic curved staircase.
The splashy duplex also boasts a 1,400-square-foot private garden with four Japanese katsura trees and a weeping beech.
Inside, there’s a large living room and an adjacent glass greenhouse — both of which open to the garden and patio from sliding glass doors.
In addition, there’s a formal dining room with marble floors, bedrooms overlooking Central Park — and a chef’s kitchen with two ovens, a separate stock pot range “with enough BTUs to reduce a cow” and a 5-foot custom range hood, according to the listing, which notes that Roger was also the national president of the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, a national gourmet society.
He is also an honorary director at Citymeals on Wheels.
The main bedroom is on the upper floor. A fourth bedroom at the top of the landing overlooks the interior garden and is currently a home office. It features the famed temperature-controlled and refrigerated custom 5,000-bottle wine cellar with a reinforced floor to hold the boozy bounty. The home also comes with its own private entrance, but there’s also a doorman and full-service entry access.
The 19-story limestone building, which dates to 1963, was built on the site of three former townhouses. The building also once housed Vice President and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who connected the penthouse to another residence he owned at 810 Fifth Ave. The penthouse is where Rockefeller held his famed “Treaty of Fifth Avenue” summit with Richard Nixon before Nixon’s 1960 presidential run.
Jordache co-founder Ralph Nakash bought the Rockefeller penthouse for $9.95 million in 2021, after buying a three-bedroom on a lower floor for $6.9 million.
The listing broker is Roger and Janet’s daughter-in-law, Bonnie Hut Yaseen, of Corcoran.