Still Not Sure

A while back I wrote in this space about a $100,000 safety razor, and how I was having trouble determining if the whole thing was a hoax or not. We’ve seen cell phones inlaid with gold and precious stones that cost even more, mattress sets that cost nearly as much, and cashmere bathroom tissue that would certainly add up after a few years, but $100,000 for something you can obtain for less than a dollar per use seems excessive. If you use a disposable razor once and then throw it out, you’d still have to live for more than 273 years before the iridium razor would pay for itself. Even if you use one of the more absurdly overpriced cartridges (I’m looking at you, Gillette Fusion) once and then throw it out, you’d still need to shave for another 70 years or so before you’d break even. But as outrageous as that might seem, I still think that the $200,000 bottle of scotch is harder to believe…

According to a note on the Only Excess website, the master blenders over at Chivas Brothers are putting together a blend of the best and most expensive Scotch whiskey “…as a liquid tribute to the oldest crown jewels in the British Isles.” Part of it, of course, is the bottle itself, which is described as being “…made from black porcelain, adorned with 413 flawless black and white diamonds, as well as 22 carats of other gemstones, set in gold and silver.” Rarity is probably also a factor, since the run of this stuff will be limited to just 21 bottles; if you’re the sort of person who would want to drink $200,000 booze in the first place (that’s somewhere around $10,000 a shot, depending on how big the bottle actually is), you’d probably like the fact that no one else is going to be able to enjoy such a thing. But what really caught my attention was the fact that the liquid inside is said to be a blend of the best whiskeys made in Scotland. Years of hanging around with scotch drinkers has already taught me that the best scotches are all single-malt types – and that most real connoisseurs will not use blended scotch for insecticide…

Obviously, if such a product actually exists, the point of having it won’t be the quality of the liquor; it will be the status conferred by having one of the rarest beverages ever marketed, in one of the most opulent packages ever developed. You can see some billionaire or celebrity buying a bottle and then displaying it in a locked cabinet in their study – or opening the thing at a party and inviting all of the guests to sample a glass. What makes this story so fantastical is that unlike the iridium razor – which is guaranteed to function perfectly for ten years or be replaced by the manufacturer – this stuff could be accidentally guzzled by a drunken houseguest on a weekend bender (who might then give the bottle to a passing driver with a demand to get him a refill)…

For the same monetary outlay, you could obtain 250 bottles of an ordinary super-premium scotch whiskey (Johnny Walker Blue runs about that), or at least 21 cases (possibly more if you order all of it at once; most distributors will offer a volume discount on an order that large) – enough to get the average person seriously drunk for something on the order of four or five years. If you were willing to accept merely exceptional scotch, you’d have enough to get falling-down drunk every day for anywhere from fifty to one hundred years, or until you died of liver failure (whichever came first)…

Until I actually hear from someone who actually paid $200,000 for a single bottle of alcohol, I’m going to remain skeptical. Would anyone really charge that kind of money for such a small amount of product? More to the point, would anyone pay that much? Is this story for real, or is someone trolling me? Only time will tell…