A Vietnamese businessman who loves collecting whisky and cognac has bagged yet another Guinness World Records title by snapping up a very expensive bottle of cognac.
Nguyen Dinh Tuan Viet already has record titles for the most expensive whisky/whiskey sold at auction at £1,452,000 ($1,811,250; €1,610,030), the most valuable whisky/whiskey collection at £13,032,468 ($16,701,583; €15,070,746), and the most valuable cognac collection valued at £19,175,971 ($22,725,964; €22,664,875).
And now, he’s added the most expensive cognac sold in a private sale to his collection.
He bagged his new record thanks to a bottle of Louis XIII: Le Salmanazar, which Nguyen purchased back in 2018 for £1,147,682 ($1,500,000; €1,283,825). It holds nine litres (1.9 gal) of Louis XIII, which is a blend of up to 1,200 eaux-de-vie sourced 100% from Grande Champagne, the first cru of the Cognac region.
The remarkable feature is the bottle: it is made with over 33 pounds (15 kg) of crystal – hand-crafted by over 20 elite artisans – and the neck is decorated with 20-karat gold. Placed side by side, a standard 750 ml (26.39 oz) cognac bottle looks so small in comparison. Because of its huge size, one needs to use a custom-designed pipette for sampling and serving!
Nguyen found out through Remy Martin – the company who made Louis XIII – about the sheer difficulty of creating such a huge bottle.
He said: “The General Director of Louis XIII shared with me an information that Baccarat crystal company attempted to blow 9 litre bottles over 150 times before getting the perfect version like now. They even thought of giving up because it was too difficult. But fortunately they persisted and the result is the Louis XIII Le Salmanazal bottle with the largest capacity in the world right now.”
According to Nguyen, the Louis XIII tastes excellent, but because so few people have had the chance to try it, precise records of the taste are difficult to obtain.
Nguyen at this moment has no intention of opening the bottle. “Louis XIII Le Salmanazal will live in my cellar as a representative of the collection’s masterpieces over the years.
“This 9 litre version I have been pursuing for a long time and spent all my patience and perseverance to bring it to my collection. This is a very arduous process, so when it was recognized as the most expensive purchase of a cognac, I felt like all my efforts over the years had been recognized.”
