Posted by Judy in Minnesota from (12.201.75.52) on July 22, 2006 at 19:52:16:
Top Mexican tequila sells for $225,000 a bottle
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Forget about the kind of tequila you slam down on the bar or knock back at parties in throat-burning shots with salt and lemon. If you're paying six figures, you might prefer to savor it in small sips.
An impossibly upmarket brand of tequila -- 100 percent blue Agave lovingly aged for six years and sold in a limited edition platinum bottle with fancy artwork on the label -- went on sale in Mexico on
Thursday night for $225,000 a bottle.
“Tonight we are trying for the Guinness Book of Records with the most expensive bottle in the world,” Fernando Altamirano, chief executive of producer Tequila Ley .925, told a launch party for the liquor.
Tequila Ley .925 has produced 66 bottles of the “Pasion Azteca” tequila, half of them pure platinum bottles and half of them gold and platinum-decorated bottles that sell for the slightly less
extravagant price of $150,000.
“Since we started out, we began with the idea of making the finest, most expensive bottle of tequila in the world,” Altamirano told Reuters.
For those on a smaller budget, there are 999 bottles of the same tequila in silver and gold bottles priced at $25,000.
Showing off one of each type, Altamirano said they had already been sold to a collector, but declined to give away the buyer's identity.
Altamirano, whose company has won awards for its stylish bottles, said his next goal was to create a million-dollar tequila bottle made from diamond-encrusted platinum and auction it at Sotheby's next
year.