Top 21 Most Expensive Bottles of Alcohol Ever Sold

Rich people do all kinds of strange things with their money. Be it throwing lavish parties, collecting things, or getting into some “Squid Game” stuff, they’ve got a lot of room to spend. Alcohol is, of course, one of the most commonly collected things, with vintage bottles selling for mind-blowing amounts of money. Take a look at this list of the most expensive alcohol ever sold. Some bottles fetched millions of dollars at auction, while others are nearly 6 feet tall. You do you, rich people.

Price: $30 million

There are expensive alcohol bottles, and then there is “Limoncello Supreme," which sounds like something you might find on the Papa John’s menu. No idea what to say about this. What do you even do after you’ve spent 27 million pounds (which comes out to about $30 million) on a bottle of the most expensive limoncello on the planet? Do you drink it? Do you look at it? There’s an 18.5-carat diamond on the bottle, so do you display it? I truly just can’t fathom spending that much money on something. 

$20 million? Now that’s more reasonable. But 30 — no way.

Price: $5.5 million

There are, you guessed it, 15,000 diamonds (and 60 carats) coiled around this bottle in the shape of a dragon. This is one of those scenarios where the most expensive bottle of liquor's value comes from the bottle, rather than the liquor. Just drink up and fill the thing up with water when you’re done and ready to display it. It’ll be our little secret.

Price: $3.7 million

This expensive vodka once sold for $3.7 million, but that is not the best thing about it. The best thing by far about Billionaire Vodka is that this appears to be the official website. It can’t be, right? There’s no way, there’s simply no way. Wow, we hope it is. Imagine spending nearly 4 million bucks on something that came from the people who made that website.

Price: $2.5 million

The fact that this was recovered from a 1907 shipwreck originally headed for the czar of The Imperial Court of Russia? Incredibly cool. The fact that instead of a certificate of authenticity, it’s paired with an NFT? Incredibly not cool.

For more food and drink coverage, please sign up for our free newsletters.

Price: $2 million

This one-of-a-kind bottle of cognac may be the finest in the world, aged in barrels for more than 100 years. But we have a feeling that it's priced at a jaw-dropping $2 million because of its diamond-studded, 24-carat gold bottle, which weighs a hefty 17 pounds. The cognac is a tribute to king Henri IV, whose descendants went on to establish Maison Dudognon.

Related: The Best Costco Liquor to Buy: Which Kirkland Brand Alcohol Is Worth It?

Price: $2 million

This is some primo rich-people stuff right here. A bottle of The Craft Irish Whiskey Co.’s  “Emerald Isle Collection” is a triple-distilled, single-malt, 29-year-old whiskey and comes inside of the most confusing of all rich-people things: a Faberge egg. We’re talking about $2 million for this bottle of whiskey inside a fake egg. Wild stuff.

Related: 11 of the Best Trader Joe's Wines Under $10

Price: $1.52 million

At the very least, this collection includes 54 bottles, each one designed as the cards in a full deck. Japanese whisky has been known to sell well, but this really topped the charts for the style. The next thing on any owner’s list: finding a display shelf that can do it justice.

Related: Eat the Rich: Lobster, Burning Man, and 7 Other Things Rich People Have 'Ruined'

Price: $1.38 million

Here’s the thing: if we were to list every whiskey sold in the millions, almost all of them would be The Macallan. Their Fine and Rare 60, Michael Dillon 60, Valerio Adami 60, Lalique Six Pillars, and Red sold for $1.9 million, $1.5 million , $1.07 million, $1.04 million, $993,000, and $975,756 respectively. The brand is, shall we say, top shelf.

The Intrepid, however, is another beast entirely. This is literally the largest bottle of whiskey in the world, a one-of-a-kind bottle checking in at 5’11,” 311 liters, and 444 bottles' worth. It is, if nothing else, a better investment than the rest of these.

Related: The Sam's Club Member's Mark Liquor Lineup: What to Buy and What to Skip

Price: $1.3 million

To think that someone might buy a bottle of potato juice for $1.3 million boggles the mind. And yet, that's what rich people are willing to spend for Russo-Baltique's gold-encrusted, diamond-covered flask of premium vodka.  The bottle of liquor, made to commemorate car manufacturer Russo-Baltique's centenary, made headlines in 2018 after thieves stole the vodka from a bar in Copenhagen. Mysteriously, the bottle was found unbroken but empty at a construction site in the Danish city.

Price: $1.24 million

Named after six different major vintages in six different decades and hand-chosen by master distiller Richard Paterson, The Dalmore let this one go in a Sotheby's Hong Kong auction for a casual $1.24 million. Years 1951, 1967, 1979, 1980, 1995, and 2000 are included.

Price: $706,000

Another in the line of premium Japanese whiskies, Yamazaki has been known to sell their vintages for prices this high pretty often. They usually start anywhere between $400,000 and $500,000, but you can snag one from WineSearcher for a tad above $706,000. That's an expensive bottle of whiskey.

Price: $503,000

Beer doesn’t usually sell for the prices that fine spirits do — in general, it’s not easy to find a beer to sell for more than $5,000. It’s also not easy to find a beer that was brewed in 1875 for an Arctic expedition. This beer, which was sold on eBay in 2007, is both. More like a historical relic than alcohol, really. 

Price: $332,640

A set of 12 always helps the price tag feel a little easier to digest, but the 300,000 it sold for in a 2018 auction via Christie's is the type of money that makes us afraid to even consider taking a sip. Ever. Sotheby's, which also holds auctions for the elusive wine, uses the term “chewy” to describe it, if that means anything to you.

Price: $304,000

Any rare wine collector knows the infamous 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc. It’s among the most famous in the world (so famous that Anton Ego, the critic in “Ratatouille,” is seen with a bottle on his table). It’s a true white whale for so many collectors, but wouldn’t it be great if somebody bought this and then posted photos of themselves pairing it with McDonald’s? Yeah. That would be great.

Price: $232,692

When Sotheby's put three bottles of 1869 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild up for sale in 2010, they expected the bottles to sell for $8,000 each, according to Wine Spectator. But the bidders had different plans. At the auction, a bottle of the collectible, direct-from-chateau wine fetched $232,692, breaking the record for the world's most expensive bottle of alcohol at the time, a 750-milliliter bottle of wine.

Price: $225,000

When it comes to the most expensive liquor bottles in the world, you may have noticed a theme. The diamond-coated bottles — and not the alcohol — are the main attraction. That's pretty standard when it comes to insanely expensive hard liquor. That's also true for this gem-studded decanter from Tequila Ley. 

This blue agave tequila, valued at a measly $2,500, is housed in a platinum and white gold bottle, adorned with 4,000 sparkly 18.5-carat diamonds. Its shiny exterior earned the company the Guinness World Record for most expensive alcohol bottle in the world in 2006.

Price: $200,000

With the value of so many of these bottles coming from the bejeweled bottles they’re sold in, you might as well just drink them and then fill it up with water and food coloring. In this case, it’s the crystal decanter that the 2012 Johnny Walker Diamond Jubilee comes in, created as a celebration of Elizabeth II's 60th year as Queen. Enjoy the stuff at least, if you’re going to spend $200,000 on it.

Price: $190,000

This might be the most interesting bottle of champagne in the world. To begin with, the champagne label is owned by Jay Z, which is fitting given the Midas' over-the-top gold exterior. Oh, and did we mention that the champagne — described as "sumptuous" and "racy" by vendors — comes in a towering 30-liter bottle? At least you get your money's worth.

Price: $144,000

A cognac collector from Asia nabbed this rarity (which was most likely bottled somewhere around the 1840s) in an online auction through Sotheby's in 2014. Truly incredible that liquor that old can last this long unharmed.

Price: $16,000

What makes a "super-premium spirit"? Remy Martin starts with a handmade 100-year-old barrel (the tiercon), which they've filled with a blend of 1,200 eaux-de-vie (the precursor to cognac), some of which have been aged for a hundred years. The result is a cognac, sold under the Louis XIII label, which retails for $16,000. It helps that Remy Martin has placed this fine liquor in just 775 Baccarat-designed decanters, made from layers of titanium, carbon, and gold.

Price: $5,000

Next to most of the limited edition bottles on this list, a four-digit number might not seem like a lot, but this isn’t whiskey or wine that we’re talking about. This is gin, and a $5,000 price tag is nothing to scoff at. The distillation process involves atmospheric pressure “less than half that found at the summit of Mount Everest” and South Pole-level temperatures. Is that type of thing, whatever it means, worth paying $4,960 more than you usually do for gin? You tell us.