People who got a bit uppity about the charity truffle auction last Saturday, which saw the monstrous thing fetching $330,000, are going to love this story. Movida today launched the world's most expensive (I'm not checking more than this; I'm assuming, that surely to God, it is) cocktail, at £35,000.
At this point, I come over all Billy Connolly: "Whit? For an effing COCKTAIL?!"
Well, no, not really. The drink (described as refreshing) is made up of Louis XII cognac, Cristal Rose champagne, sugar, angostura bitters and 24-carat edible gold leaf. Fine, whatever, but it also has an 11-carat white diamond ring at the bottom, so that doesn't really count as foodstuff, does it?
The buyer got it as a Christmas present for his girlfriend and the best bit of the story comes towards the end, in a quote from "social commentator" Peter York. I can't better it, so I won't try to:
It is so gauche, so crashingly crass, that everyone else will see the buyers as barely literate, as one step up from a potato.It will be one of those things that unite both the middle class and the old rich in a belief that the super-rich come out of some kind of primeval ooze.
I'm with him. But, stupid gimmicks aside, what's the most you've ever spent on a foodstuff, for a gift or otherwise? And what would be on your foodie wish list this Christmas?
