8 Crazy-Expensive Vessels for Wine, Beer, and Whiskey
While most of us probably just set down our bottles of Dom Pérignon any old place—the vintage Isamu Noguchi coffee table, say, or the passenger-side floor of our Silver Shadows—there are those among us who are, well, let's say "more refined." That's because they're investing in the recent collaboration between Dom Pérignon and Jeff Koons: 650 limited-edition, built-to-order Venus-inspired balloon sculpture bottle-holders, a mere $20,000 apiece.
Which is only logical, of course. If you're going to drop, say, 25 grand on a 1971 Henri Jayer Richebourg Grand Cru, you can't just dump it into any old crystal stemware you've got lying around. And when you crack open one of the only 40 existing bottles of 1926 Macallan, you want to put it in something special. Or, at least, diamond-encrusted, right? Otherwise you're just drinking absurdly rare alcohol for the meaningless extravagance of being able to brag that you had an experience no one else gets, nyah nyah nyah, and nothing means anything anyway, because we're all going to die. But that's nonsense! So how do the owners of thrillingly ridiculous over-expensive alcohol store, drink, and serve it? In thrillingly ridiculous over-expensive glassware of course!
1/8Not content with making sleek, sleek cars, the fine folks over at Aston Martin have turned their attention toward making sleek, sleek dishware. Case in point: this lovely One-77 Champagne Flute Set, twelve sterling-silver flutes lined with pure gold. It's a steal at a mere $42,000. NO BOND REFERENCE?
2/8If silver and gold seem too hoi polloi, you can always get glassware that encases a diamond or two from the aptly named company Diamonds in Glass. This little number, the Imperial Champagne Glass contains at least 8 carats of diamond in the stem, and they're always happy to tailor the design to your individual whims. When a single glass goes for $86,500, their eagerness to please shouldn't be a surprise.
3/8Of course, it's not really that special to have glassware that just any old person with $86,500 can get their greasy mitts on. If you're going to drink something truly unique in this world, you need a glass that is also truly unique. Alas, this circa-1760 engraved Eagle frigate Privateer wine glass was snatched up at auction last May, for $18,000. Keep an eye out, though: Bonhams mentions that two similar glasses found their way to auction in 2012. You might be able to get only one, but you're not planning on sharing that Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru anyway.
4/8Let's stop getting chintzy for a moment. Some occasions call for celebration, and you don't celebrate with red wine, you do it with the $275,000 bottle of 1907 Heidsieck that was lost in a shipwreck, spent 80 years at the bottom of the sea, and was finally recovered in 1997. And you drink that in a set of diamond-encrusted champagne glasses cut from solid blocks of crystal, designed by John Calleija that cost $400,000. Or you don't drink it at all. I mean, why bother?
5/8You don't just need expensive paraphernalia to drink your drinks, however. You also need expensive paraphernalia to keep it in. If you're one of the lucky twelve to own the Penfolds 2004 Block 42 single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon produced from the oldest continuously producing vineyard in the world, your problems are solved. The record-setting $168,000 wine comes in its own hand-blown, dangerous-looking "ampoule," which a "senior member of the Penfolds Winemaking team" will personally help you open at your "special opening ceremony" when you make the fateful decision to finally, ceremoniously, drink the thing.
6/8If whiskey is more your jam, and you're looking for a pleasantly hefty container to keep it in, look no further than the "Cire Perdue" crystal decanter, handcrafted by Lalique in honor of the sesquicentennial of René Lalique's birth. It was sold (filled with 46-year-old Macallan) at Sotheby's in November 2010 for $460,000. But who knows, you may be able to track the current owner down and make an offer.
7/8Even if you're fantastically wealthy, there are still those days when you just want to relax and crack open a nice, cheap, $1,850 bottle of Antarctic Nail Ale. But that doesn't mean you need to drink it in a cheap glass. This 850-gram solid-gold beer mug from Japanese goldsmiths Ginza Tanaka is just the thing. Fifty grand and it's yours.
8/8Whew! After all that, Jeff Koons's Venus-inspired balloon-sculpture Dom Pérignon bottle holder seems downright reasonable! It is beautiful and, at $20,000, relatively inexpensive, given that it's also a work of art made by one of the world's most living famous artists. And it would look pretty amazing right in the front foyer, wouldn't it? Where everyone comes in? You've been looking for something to go on that solid jade pedestal for, like, ever. What the hey: treat. yo. self.
