Category: Brandy Bottle Reviews

Only 150 crystal decanters of L’Esprit de Tiffon have been made using cognacs from the private cellar of Sverre Braastad (1879-1979).  He took over management of the Tiffon Cognac house after marrying the producer’s daughter, Edith Rousseau, in 1913.  L’Esprit de Tiffon is unique because it has been blended entirely from pre-phylloxera cognacs with the oldest dating back to 1805. The flavour is also unique because the grape variety used in the pre-phylloxera era was mainly Folle and Brastaad’s cognacs were from the Fins Bois cru.  L’Esprit de Tiffon was created specifically for a Polish company specialising in gifts for the wealthy.  All decanters were sold, for undisclosed sums, before the launch.  Unsurprising maybe but surely Tiffon would have benefitted from giving such a statement piece broader geographical exposure?

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.