There’s nothing like kicking back at the end of a long, hard day and relaxing with a glass of your favorite beverage, be it a bulb of wine, a cheeky cocktail, or even a perfectly chilled soda. But not all beverages are made even! Some super luxurious spirits are actually filtered through diamonds, others come in bottles made from diamonds, and there are even fruit juices that you’d need several mortgages to cover! So, get your straws ready, because we’re heading on a taster tour of some of the most expensive drinks in the entire world!
Cat Poop Coffee
Not everyone is a fan of coffee, with it being quite a strong, bitter flavored beverage. But even avid caffeine lovers might have a hard time swallowing Kopi Luwak coffee, also disgustingly known as Cat Poop Coffee!
Fortunately, there’s no actual cats involved, but civets are! These are tiny mammals that look like a cat and a weasel made a really weird baby. Native only to Asia and Africa, Kopi Luwak is made from the dung of civets who have eaten coffee cherries, digested the fruit, and pooped out the beans!
But why on earth would anyone grind up and drink something derived from poop? Well, civets are picky eaters and will only chow down on the ripest cherries. The animals digestive enzymes then remove some of the acidity from the beans, which makes for a much smoother cup of coffee with an almost caramel taste. That said, per pound, the poop is worth between $100 and $600, which works out roughly at $35 to $100 per cup, making it the most expensive coffee in the world!
Oval Vodka
We’re moving onto the hard drinks, which is where the real money is spent, as you can probably tell just by looking at this limited-edition bottle of Oval Vodka.
It’s covered from neck to base in more than 7,000 multifaceted Swarovski crystals, which are high-quality crystal cut glass. The way they’re cut gives the glassy gems a super high refraction index, making this bottle sparkle like it’s made out of diamonds! With this great glittering jacket on, these premium bottles sold for almost $7,000 each in select London nightclubs back in 2008. But the vodka inside them wasn’t all that expensive. Unlike other spirits, vodka can be made from just about anything – from corn to fruit! Oval vodka is made from grain, but it’s marketed as the world’s only “structured” vodka, which apparently comes from water molecules naturally bonding to alcohol molecules during a secret patented structuring process, whatever that means!
They claim this results in the smoothest, cleanest taste possible, but seeing as a regular bottle costs as little as $45, the market clearly doesn’t agree!
The Winston
When it comes to cocktails, it’s not just top-shelf spirits that can jack up the cost of a single glass. The price also depends on the skill, expertise, and precision of the bartender making it, as anyone lucky, and rich enough, to taste The Winston would agree.
Made at only one bar by one bartender in Melbourne, Australia, this nearly $13,000 cocktail once topped the Guinness World Record book as the most expensive cocktail in the world back in 2013. Club 23 bartender Joel Heffernan created the costly concoction by using two $6,000 shots of 1858 Croizet Cognac, an $800 Grand Marnier Quintessence, a splash of Chartreuse Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolonge, a dash of Angostura Bitters, and a final fancy touch of chocolate nutmeg dust.
This may make some connoisseurs gasp, but to layman like most of us, it doesn’t mean much. Suffice to say, it was a supposedly sublime mix of sweet, spicy, and bitter flavors. "Supposedly" because Club 23 only ever sold one Winston before they closed in 2019, and the buyer only took a few sips before leaving! For that ludicrous price, I'd have licked the glass clean even if I didn’t like it!
The End of History Ale
BrewDog haven’t been getting the best press recently, from claims of creating a toxic workplace, to lying about the value of their competition winning Golden Cans. But back when this brewery company still had a stellar reputation, they made headlines for much weirder reasons.
In 2016, Ohio lifted legislature that prevented breweries from producing beer over 12% alcohol by volume, or ABV for short. To mark the occasion, BrewDog released a limited-edition line of beers called
The End of History, a 55% ABV Belgian-style ale brewed with nettles and juniper. But the insanely high alcohol content wasn’t the most shocking thing about it. Each beer came in a bottle inserted into a taxidermized animal! From gutted grey squirrels to stuffed stoats, each was dressed up in little coats and hats, and could be handled just like a regular bottle of beer! It was designed to celebrate the breaking of a taboo, which BrewDog extended to the very presentation of an already polarizing beer! While many will think they look tacky as hell, they certainly didn’t come cheap. Only BrewDog shareholders who had invested more than $20,000 could receive one, which is why only 12 of the baffling bottles were ever made! Thank God they stopped there; woodland creatures around the world were starting to get nervous!
Acqua Di Cristallo: The Most Expensive Bottle Of Water
What’s the most you’d be willing to pay for a regular bottle of water? $2? Maybe $3 if you were really desperate? How about $60,000? Sounds ridiculous right? Well, Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani, also known as the “Most Expensive Bottle of Water in the World” according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is as pricey as its nickname suggests. Sold at an eye watering $60,000 per 750 ml, one bottle costs the same as a new Corvette!
So, what exactly makes this water worth the same as a sports car? Well, for a start, the bottle is a snazzy, 24-carat solid gold container. But just having a bottle made out of gold wasn’t enough for its creators, who also added 5 mg of 23 carat gold into the water itself to improve the alkalinity! This is supposedly beneficial to human health, although there’s not a lot of research supporting this alkaline theory, so it was likely added purely to justify the insanely high price. The water itself isn’t out of any old tap though! It’s sourced from springs in France and Fiji, with a little added glacial water from Iceland as well. The fact that these three places are thousands of miles away from each other probably adds to the cost! But just for perspective, $60,000 could pay the average water bill for a family of four in America for around 70 years.
Diamond Jubilee, Johnnie Walker
Whiskey is the drink of heroes and badasses alike! For those who don’t know a dram thing about it, it’s a strong spirit made from grain mash, which is mixed with spring water and fermented in wooden casks. Yeast converts the sugar into alcohol, which gradually gains a distinct flavor depending on the quality of the cask it’s aged in.
And the longer it’s left, the more intense and revered the flavor it takes on. It’s for this reason that older whiskeys tend to be more expensive. Though some are so rare that only royalty can get their hands on them, like the
Diamond Jubilee from Johnnie Walker.
To mark the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Johnnie Walker released a specially crafted blend of rare malt and grain Scotch whiskeys. It had been distilled since 1952, the same year that she ascended the throne, using casks made from English oak cut from the Queen’s private Sandringham estate! Just 60 bottles were released to the public in 2014, presented in diamond-shaped Baccarat crystal decanters that stand on crystal legs adorned with Britannia silver. It’s widely considered to be the best whiskey ever created by the infamous Johnnie Walker, and for that it costs a whopping $160,000 per bottle!
When An Orange Juice Cost Dollar General $277k
Back in 2014, a diabetic cashier working at Dollar General in America asked if she could keep a small carton of juice near her in case she suffered from a hypoglycemic attack. This is when a person’s blood sugar drops too low, which can lead to unconsciousness and, in the worst cases, can even be life threatening.
She was denied this request by her manager in line with Dollar General’s policies about grazing on the job, and so she kept on working regardless. While alone in the store one day, she began to develop symptoms of an attack and so quickly grabbed a $1.69 bottle of OJ from the shelf and drank it. As soon as she felt better, she paid for the juice and went back to work. However, her manager found out she’d drunk the juice prior to purchase and, despite it being a medical emergency, fired her for it! But this was a huge mistake. The ex-employee rightfully filed a lawsuit against the company for their unfair actions, the jury of which found she’d been horribly discriminated against. Dollar General was forced to pay $27,565 in backpay, plus a quarter of a million dollars in damages. And that, my friends, is how a single bottle of OJ ended up
costing Dollar General more than $277,000. Hopefully they took at least part of it out of that power-mad manager’s salary!
1947 Cheval Blanc
Growing good quality grapes is no easy feat. They require time, attention, and the perfect conditions, which is why grapes from specific regions and certain years with good weather make the best bottles of wine.
However, few years have come as close to perfection as 1947, where the weather in the St Emilion region of France made for some of the greatest grapes known to man. And it’s these grapes that created the
1947 Cheval Blanc. Merlot grapes make up 55% of the wine, giving it voluptuousness, while Cabernet Franc grapes make up 45% lending strength and backbone. For those of us that don’t speak wine, this is a very fancy way of saying that this is the good stuff. So good, in fact, that this now-famous merlot wine was granted a top-class A status, one of only two merlot wines in the world to do so! That meant that when one 6-litre bottle of it was put up for sale back in 2010, afficionados didn’t hesitate to pay the phenomenal $304,000 price tag! That’s more than $6,000 per glass!
Dino Vodka
A name alone can tell you more about some alcoholic beverages than others, as you can probably tell by the self-aggrandizing name of Diva Vodka.
Usually, vodka is filtered after it’s been distilled to ensure the product is free from impurities. But Diva Vodka’s website claims their Vodka has been filtered 7 times through sands made from crushed diamonds! Sounds a little over the top if you ask me! But the precious stones supposedly help filter out heavy metals from the water, giving the vodka a much smoother taste. Although that’s not this Diva’s biggest brag.
The bottle it’s served in contains a wand of Swarovski crystals, made in blue, pink or green. They also come with a Swarovski crystal bracelet, because we all know classy women just love getting their jewelry off vodka bottles. But despite all these fancy sounding flourishes, these bottles only sold for about $4,000 apiece when they were released back in 2011.
However, in 2012, a limited edition set of the bottles were made with precious and semi-precious stones that pushed some of their values up to a whopping $1 million! Today though, the bottles are back to regular Swarovski crystals, and no longer have the same appeal they once did, meaning they’re worth less than $150 each. Looks like this diva took a real dive!
Russo-Baltique Vodka
Fans of the show House of Cards might recognize this next bottle. It made a guest appearance as a solid gold, $750,000 bottle of Vodka served at a presidential dinner! Although, it was actually played by a replica, as the real star of the show was far too expensive to use.
Russo-Baltique Vodka in House of Cards Season 3 by DARTZ Motorz Known as the Russo-Baltique Vodka, this brilliant gold bottle was once considered to be the most expensive bottle of vodka in the world with a value of $1.3 million! For perspective, that’s almost the same as a Bugatti Veyron!
The bottle is made of bullet proof glass, coated in 13 lbs of gold and silver mixed together, with a diamond-encrusted replica of the Russian Imperial Eagle on its cap. Russian luxury car maker Russo-Baltique created the vodka to commemorate the centenary of the company's factory. Its cap is a replica of the radiator guard used for the Russo-Baltique cars, molded from gold coins minted between 1908 and 1912.
Although very little is known about the vodka itself, meaning most of the value comes from its precious packaging. But in 2018, the bottle was stolen from Café 33 in Denmark during a robbery! Fortunately,
the bottle was found discarded in a nearby construction site, but it was completely empty, meaning they stole the least expensive part of it! I guess those burglars didn’t do their homework!
$2 Million Cognac “Henri IV”
Very few beverages are rare enough to break the prestigious $2 million price barrier. Which is why the Henri IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne doesn’t rely on its liquid alone to hit that prestigious price point, but also on the bottle it ceremoniously arrives in!
The 100-year-old cognac comes in a 24-carat gold and sterling platinum bottle, decorated lavishly with 6,500 real diamonds designed and crafted by master-jeweler Jose Davalos! All together, these opulent materials bring the bottle to a staggering 17 lbs in weight, and that’s without the liquid inside! For all the expensive embellishments, it can carry just 100 cl, which is only a little larger than a standard spirit bottle. But the bottle on its own was priced at £1 million back in 2008, making it worth a whopping $1.8 million today! Even though the liquor only adds approximately $700,000 to its current $2.5 million price tag, it’s got a rich history behind it! Its makers are based in the prized Cognac Grande Champagne region of France and are direct descendants of King Henri IV of France! They’ve been responsible for making this high-quality cognac since 1776! However, the bottle it now sits in isn’t as unique as its history.
Ley Diamanté, The Most Expensive Tequilla
Even though it looks like that last Cognac container, this is actually a completely different bottle released in 2010 and designed by Alejandro Gomez Oropeza. And it’s not filled with Cognac, it’s brimming with tequila. Pasión Azteca’s world-class tequila, to be precise!
Tequila is a spirit distilled from the agave plant, but this tequila has been aged for 7 years in white oak barrels, giving it a smooth, sweet flavor akin to butterscotch. It comes from the company’s Los Altos de Jalisco Plantations, where the best tequilas in the world are made! But the main value of this drink is in its vessel. The 130 cl bottle, called Ley Diamanté is made of ceramic with a 4 ½ lb layer of platinum and 4100 diamonds totaling 328 carats!
From design to completion, it took ten months to make involving the work of 17 Mexican artisans. All this work is what gives the bottle an unbelievable $3.5 million price tag! Although, you can’t help but wonder, is the design a copy of the Henri IV Cognac decanter?
The Eye of the Dragon
In 2018, a legendary event took Vodka lovers all over the world by storm when a never-before seen bottle of Royal Dragon Vodka was unveiled for the very first time. Though it wasn’t just any bottle! This was "The Eye of the Dragon"; a 6-liter hand-blown bottle of 5-times distilled vodka, coated in almost 4 ½ lbs of 18 carat white gold in the shape of a traditional Chinese dragon, encrusted with 15,000 diamonds!
The Eye Of The Dragon by The Moodie Davitt Report Aside from being distilled to the point of near perfection, the vodka was also infused with 23-carat gold leaves. Though they didn’t add anything to the taste, they certainly added to the overall look – and price! But the pièce de resistance of this uber expensive bottle was the rare 50-carat yellow diamond making up one of the dragon’s eyes, which alone was worth $4.6 million! Altogether, this stunning spectacle had 620 carats worth of gems encrusted into its design, putting its price around $5.5 million! That means a single shot of this would cost more than $40,000. For perspective, you could buy a brand-new Mercedes Benz CLA for that, and have change left over!
Ruwa
You might be thinking that it’s only alcoholic beverages that cost the earth, though that isn’t quite the case. Alcohol in many Muslim majority countries is strictly illegal, but that hasn’t stop capitalism from finding a way to woo these religious teetotalers!
This is Ruwa, a drink presented in a hand-made crystal decanter studded with 8,000 diamonds, 200 rubies, all set in two whole bars of white gold!
The drink itself is a simple beverage flavored with elderflower and roses, that’s supposedly soft and full bodied. However, purchasing one bottle gives its owner the right to unlimited free refills of the drink. This makes me think that the staggering $5.5 million price tag is all down to that super ostentatious bottle! It almost doesn’t sound real, does it? Well, sources claim that it genuinely was produced by the aptly named “Luxury Beverage Company” back in 2011. Although, this company seems to have gone out of business, probably because no one was crazy enough to spend $5.5 million on a refillable bottle of fruit juice!
Isabella‘s Islay
This bottle of drink looks similar to the last drink, Ruwa; however, Ruwa was a fruit juice, but this is supposedly whiskey! It’s called ‘Isabella’s Islay’, but just like Ruwa, this bottle is made of around 5,000 diamonds, 250 rubies, and two bars of white gold coating the decanter.
Inside this suspiciously similar bottle though, a single malt scotch whisky awaits. There’s just one, very large issue though: there’s almost no information about the whisky itself. Their website describes it as having a hot-buttered-toasty-soot and woodsmoke character, which sounds more like licking the inside of a greased-up chimney rather than drinking a whiskey!
But they craftily leave out any information about how long it’s been distilled for, where it’s been aged, or who it’s been made by! Though that hasn’t stopped the makers of this beverage from slapping an astronomical $6.2 million price tag on the bottle! Because the Isabella Islay company has neglected to even note the size of the bottle, I’m going to assume it’s a standard 750 ml. That means, a single 25 ml sip of this whisky should cost you more than $200,000! Man, if you spilled a drop, you’d accidentally bankrupt yourself!
However, Isabella Islay apparently offers free refills of the whisky, so it’s clearly not the drink making up that $6.2 million cost! It probably comes as no surprise that this was also designed by the previously mentioned “Luxury Beverage Company,” who should have called themselves the ‘Luxury Bottle-Design Company”, if you ask me!
Billionaire Vodka
With a name like Billionaire Vodka, there’s no question that this is a drink only the elite can afford. It was created by Leon Verres, an almost unheard-of luxury fashion designer and the weirdly self-proclaimed King of Vodka. This confident king launched the world’s most expensive vodka onto the market back in 2011 for a cool $3.7 million.
The vodka is made from a secret Russian recipe, distilled from pure wheat and water obtained from a natural spring from Caverswell Castle in England. However normal filtering wasn’t enough for Leon, so his recipe supposedly calls for the mixture to be filtered over millions of dollars’ worth of real diamonds. This apparently makes it the purest vodka in the world!
But that alone wouldn’t justify the exorbitant price tag, so Leon designed a 5-liter bottle with 3,000 real diamonds, white gold embellishments, and a faux fur finish to hold it! But was this enough for the crazy King of Vodka? Of course not! In 2015 he released an even larger, more ostentatious version of the vodka! Containing 18 liters of the spirit, decorated with almost 2,000 diamonds and a rich coat of faux fur, it entered the market at an unbelievable $7.25 million.
Considering people earn an average of about $1.7 million during their lifetime, it would take more than 4 lifetimes for the average person to afford this bizarre bottle! But not even elite people making the big bucks are brought in by Leon’s weird marketing moves. It’s been up for sale for 7 years, but there’s no record of anyone actually buying one of these pretentiously pricy bottles, even though Leon claimed they would definitely sell out. Looks like real billionaires have better things to spend their money on!
The Most Expensive Drink in the World
But even Billionaire Vodka can’t compete with the real king of bank-breaking beverages. Is it a 500-year-old whisky? A vodka made from blended diamonds? A long-lost bottle of Jesus’ tears?! Nope, it’s actually a limoncello!
D’Amalfi Limoncello is a type of liqueur from the Campania region of Italy, made by infusing alcohol with the peels of lemons from the Amalfi Coast which are renowned for their flavor. This sweet lemon liqueur is often served as an after dinner digestif, like the cherry on top of a fine meal.
However, the D’Amalfi Limoncello Supreme is in a league of its own, listed online by designer Stuart Hughes for an unbelievable $44 million! Supposedly, he designed two bottles that were commissioned specially for a customer of the Antica Distilleria in Italy. They each contain 3 diamonds at the neck totaling 13 carats, and the bodies include two of the world’s rarest diamonds, which are a mammoth 18.5 carats a piece! There’s just one problem though, there are no photos of this bottle available to the public, so no-one knows if it really exists! Stuart’s website boasts
several images of photoshopped bottles, but the real thing has yet to be seen. Makes you wonder if it really exists, or if Stuart has just put that ridiculous price tag on his website to draw attention to his business. Either way, this is going to take me a while to digest! I hope you were amazed at the most expensive drinks in the world. Thanks for reading!
