World`s most expensive cocktail

When you hear the word Sidecar, what image does your mind sketch? That removable one wheeler attached to a bike & Dharmendra singing "Yeh dosti" in Sholay? Sorry, moi is different and the picture that my mind etches is a classic martini glass, sugar rimmed, filled with Cognac shaken on ice with Cointreau and lime juice. Yeah - Sidecar - It`s a classic cocktail and has been around since end of World War I . Cognac being an expensive affair, bars around Bangalore resort to using regular brandy. The taste differs a bit but still is worth some indulgence.

There is good reason, why I am writing of Sidecar today. As I flipped though the pages of India Today`s lifestyle mag - SPICE, the last page was a delight to my eyes. A big picture and a small note, about Sidecar made in the Hemmingway Bar at "The Ritz", Paris. Hemmingway Bar is considered to be the Mecca of cocktails and serves the most astronomically "priced and tasting" drinks in the world. The bar is supposedly encased in warm wood paneling with photos of Ernest Hemingway covering the walls. There are bookcases and trinkets, leather armchairs and a hidden nook. My wife is visiting Paris next week & I intend to force her to go pay a visit to this temple of bars. May be I will get a first hand picture or two to post on this blog then.

Right now I am posting a scanned picture from the magazine & reproducting the text below it. The hemmingway bar has the Guinness Book record of serving the world`s most expensive cocktail.






" Call it classic fantastic. The Ritz Sidecar Cocktail, shaken and stirred, at the Hemmingway Bar in Hotel Ritz, Paris is a shot of excess. Quite literally. At Euros 700 (Rs45,182) , the Guinness Book of World Records calls it the world`s most expensive, commercially available cocktail. Concocted in 1923 by Frank Meier, the first chief barman at the Ritz, it is made of cointreau and lemon juice, and of exception fine 1865 Champagne cognac, produced before the ravages of phylloxera on the vineyards. In the 1860s, a pestilence of aphid-like insects wiped outmany of France`s finest grapevines, and only a handful of bottles of the Ritz Reserve remained (which, infact, German soldiers tried to steal from The Ritz during WWII). Preserved for more than a century, this 1865 Cognac is a rare treat. Which is why the hotel has sold only 60 drinks in the past 3 years. Savour, slowly we say."


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About Shank

Shank is a cocktail enthusiast & a self-proclaimed mixologist. He likes to experiment with spirits. He has traveled around a bit visiting hundreds of bars and tasting the buzziest of alcohols, cocktails and shooters.



Shank spent early years of his dizziness in Mumbai. He has lived in Hyderabad for long and for the past few years is chilling his glass in Bangalore.



He is currently busy spreading his love for spirits through this blog - Cocktail Nirvana.



This blog is part of his ongoing quest for fine spirits, creative cocktails and classic mixology. These online journals will capture his cocktail inventions, adventures with alcohol, trips to bars, meeting with ace mixologists, lessons in the art of drinking and much more.

This apart, ignoring good judgment, the fine folks at www.mybangalore.com also allow him to take up valuable space on their portal with his words & pictures.

Away from Nirvana