by Felix Cohen
I had to ask him to repeat himself. The representative from Remy Martin had just told me that the bottle of Cognac I was holding was one of only 30 in the country, and that the bottle was black crystal; made using an entirely new process for Remy. Such facts are not so unusual, however, in the world of spirits. The statement that had caused my mind to briefly shut down was that it was worth £5000. My bartenders sense immediately told me that was almost £200 per measure, meaning that it could retail in a bar for about £1000 a snifter (guessing conservatively). This is not a cognac for use in a Sidecar. When the cost of a spirit approaches this sort of telephone number level, one has to wonder if there is some sort of massive practical joke being played, if not on oneself, but on the entire industry. All I could think was 'do not drop it'.
The Remy Martin Louis XIII Black Pearl cognac is, evidently, probably the most ultra-premium of almost any spirit available on the production market. Certainly, one can find bottles of brandy for larger sums of money, but these are rare, preserved bottles, most often connected with Napoleon in some way. What Remy have done, excavating a barrel from a dusty, dark corner of their cellar, where it has lain for at least a century, and carefully bottling it into the (in my my opinion), slightly crass and phallocentric Black Pearl bottle, before selling it to bankers, investors and the occasional connoisseur for such an outrageous sum that Marx would probably have choked.
Is it worth the price then? I did not, of course, get a chance to sample the stuff, or even get a good idea of its colour (a marque of quality in any gold spirit). But I have sampled a fair few very expensive products in my time, from 35 year old scotches to gin infused with saffron, and my experience is that there is really not so much to call in this; anyone can tell the difference between a £15 scotch and a £40, but the difference between the £40 and £400 whisky is much less (any manufacturers who would like to pay to prove me otherwise are, of course, more than welcome!). This applies to most premium products, from audio components to sports cars. The curve of diminishing returns implies that, at least colloquially, the first 25% of effort yields 75% of the results, while perfection remains frustratingly asymptotic. And while I may have at least a semi-trained palate, the majority of my customers find it hard to blind taste the difference between a light scotch from a cognac; certainly after they have had several of either!
Clearly, in the case of the Black Pearl, one is paying for packaging, associations and the cachet that comes from owning a limited edition, and I'd advise anyone who purchases it to hold onto it; not even uncorking it to insert the crystal stopper. Even out of barrel, this cognac could easily accrue value fast enough to embarrass even Google stock prices. Still, I think it might be better for your chances of reincarnation if you were to send 200 african children to school for a year.
