Sometimes, drinking away your sorrows doesn’t mend a broken heart. And these days, it can break the bank.
Take the US$51,200 Dazzle cocktail, available at the Second Floor Bar at Harvey Nichols in Manchester, U.K. It’s got rose Champagne and strawberry and lychee liqueur. But the real buzz comes from the 18-karat white-gold ring with pink tourmaline and diamond stones nestled below all that booze.
Other cocktails don’t need gems to be ultra-pricey. Consider the Bar at the Merchant Hotel in Belfast’s US$1,400 Mai Tai.
A Mai Tai, the token tipple of tiki bars–for the price of a trip to Bora Bora?
“It’s all about the rum,” says Sean Muldoon, the “potation” manager at the opulent hotel bar in northern Ireland. “The presentation may seem like nothing,” says Muldoon, referring to the bottle’s plain-Jane, hand-written label. “But I believe what we have here is something very, very special … This is history in a bottle.”
Indeed. The J. Wray Nephew 17-year-old rum from Kingston, Jamaica, is the very same golden, pungent, full-bodied rum that inspired “Trader” Vic Bergeron to create the original Mai Tai at his Oakland bar in 1944. It’s unclear if this bottle of 17-year is an actual remnant from the sugar estate or a ridiculously limited replica made some time later. Either way, there are only six bottles of the stuff floating around, and the Merchant’s bottle, which sleeps in the hotel safe at night, is the only one that’s available to the public.
Crafty cocktailing
There have always been people with money to burn, but rarely have there been so many exorbitantly priced cocktails at their disposal.
Modern day “mixologists” like Muldoon are constantly seeking ways to elevate the art of cocktail-making by conjuring their own cordials, syrups and tinctures. They are driven by a public that has become increasingly savvy and discriminating about what passes their lips, and distillers who keep giving them better and better spirits to work with.
Antonio Dandrea, bar manager at the Donovan Bar at Rocco Forte’s Brown’s Hotel in London, says this puts a lot of pressure on mixologists to constantly push the cocktail envelope.
“People are always looking for something different,” he says, “something they can’t find anywhere else.”
Hence his lavish US$100 truffle martini, which begins with a nubby black truffle from Alba enjoying a 48-hour soak in super-premium vodka.
For US$20 more, he’ll mix in some chocolate liqueur, float some double cream across the top and add two slices of fresh truffle.
Top of the tops
Not one for sweet drinks? We scoured bars, casinos, restaurants and lounges around the world to find other decadent libations and discovered they fall into distinct categories.
Some, like the famous Ritz sidecar at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, also deliver gravitas in a glass. This former most-expensive Guinness record holder features a coveted 1865 Ritz Reserve cognac from Napoleonic times.
Other lavish cocktails contain pricey, top-notch–though not necessarily historic–ingredients. The margarita at Isla Restaurant at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas is made with smooth Herradura Seleccion Suprema tequila, Grand Marnier 100-Year Anniversary, Cointreau and fresh citrus syrup. An added bonus? It’s prepared table-side at the restaurant by Isla’s very own “tequila goddess.”
Sometimes, it’s the garnish–not the pour–that sends the price soaring, as in rubies parading as maraschino cherries or a solid-gold swizzle stick. The most famous in that category is the Algonquin Hotel’s US$10,000 martini-on-the-rock–the “rock” being a 1.52-carat diamond from the hotel jeweler.
Serious spirits aficionados, however, dismiss these as choking hazards dreamed up by marketing types.
“I may as well serve a cocktail on top of a mink coat and call it my US$20,000 sidecar,” says Duncan Halden, bar manager at Gordon Ramsey at the London in New York.
Though it’s not on the menu, he serves a US$550 sidecar to connoisseurs upon request that, he says, “out-luxes” the famous version at the Paris Ritz. It features Hennessey Ellipse super-premium cognac–poured from a decanter that was specially designed by Tomas Bastide, a designer at Baccarat–and Grand Marnier 150.
| World’s priciest cocktails |
| Pascale Le Draoulec and Lauren Sherman |
Go to Forbes.com to view the slideshow
Our Pinot Grigio, a medium bodied white wine, was bottled on September 10, 2007 and although it was drinkable right away we found it to be like sour grapes for the first few months. 
We bottled our Pinot Noir on June 20, 2007 & we didn’t realize how long it would feel until it’s maturity date: November 20, 2007! 
We bottled our first white wine, a light bodied Reilsing on June 1st, 2007. 
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