The Bottle Story – Henry IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac

In a recent list of the Ten Most Expensive Spirits, this bottle of Henry IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne came second, retailing at a cool £1.2 million. Although the cognac is 100 years old most of the value is in the bottle.  Made from 24 carat gold and sterling platinum, scattered with 6,500 diamonds, the bottle weighs in at a mere 8kg.  You might expect such an extravagant piece to be unique but amazingly that is not the case.  Sitting at number one in the same list is a bottle of Tequila worth £2.1 million. Made from white gold, platinum and diamonds its appearance is almost identical, presumably because it had the same designer – Ley.925.  Glitzy presentations of cognac have always been popular but at over a million pounds, you would surely expect exclusivity to take precedence over a bottle that imitates Tequila, or Remy Martin’s Louis XIII for that matter!  As for the Cognac our 1914 Borderies, distilled 100 years ago takes some beating.