On 11th of October, 2012 Salvatore Calabrese, broke the record for the costliest cocktail ever made, here is the complete story for you....
What could go wrong? Well, Salvatore attempted the world record in July, but calamity struck: the bottle of 1778 Clos de Griffier Vieux Cognac, worth around £50,000, was dropped. 'When something gets smashed in a bar it's normally cleaned up straight away,' he says. 'But in this case everyone just stood looking at the puddle for 10 minutes. Should we try to sponge it up and filter the liquid? We mopped it up in the end; funnily enough, the bartender who cleaned it away was stopped by police on his way home and asked if he'd been drinking.'
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| Salvatore Calabrese |
The remains of that bottle are now behind glass in the 'museum cabinet' at Salvatore's Bar, containing more than £1 million worth of vintage cognacs. For today's attempt, however, he managed to find a replacement bottle, as well as a 1770 bottle of Kummel liquer, an 1860 Dubb Orange Curacao and a tiny bottle of 19th-century Angostura bitters.
For as well as being the most expensive single drink in history, Salvatore's record-breaking cocktail will also be the oldest, with a combined age of 730 years. Two of the bottles here are from the time of the American Revolution, of Captain Cook and Marie Antoinette. William Wordsworth was born in 1770. Today is an event of almost archaeological importance. Indeed, Salvatore tackles the wax seal on the first bottle with all the sensitivity of a Bronze Age tomb excavation. There's several minutes of silence as he struggles, in front of an audience of bar regulars, friends and fellow bartenders, using a heated knife to loose the cork… and it's out. After all four bottles are opened, Salvatore tastes a thimbleful of each, 'to see if the drink is still alive and can be used'. The verdict? 'Mamma Mia!'
For the attempt, during London's Cocktail Week, he uses a 100-year-old bottle opener, the first mixing glass he ever used, given to him 40 years ago, and a rare, 19th-century glass. The ice is not vintage, but 'wonderfully pure'. 'Salvatore's Legacy' is mixed and stirred, sampled by its inventor, then handed to a man in the corner to drink. For the attempt to be verified by the Guinness Book of Records, the cocktail has to be actually bought by someone. The unnamed guest will be given a bill for £5,500. For a single drink.
And so the world record is broken and held by the UK. For the past four years it has been held by Dubai, for a £3,766.52 cocktail made at the Burj Al Arab hotel. Should you feel like taking another title, Dubai still holds the record for the biggest kebab (468kg), the largest coin (a metre wide) and the longest line of sandwiches (2,667.13 metres). Or you may want to wash your hands of the whole thing. But Dubai holds the record for that - for 72 different nationalities washing their hands at the same time.
Salvatore's Legacy
40ml 1778 Clos de Griffier Vieux Cognac
20ml 1770 Kummel Liqueur
20ml circa 1860 Dubb Orange Curacao
4 dashes of circa 1900s Angostura Bitter
Salvatore at Playboy, 14 Old Park Lane, Mayfair, London, W1K 1ND (020 7491 8586; www.playboyclublondon.com)
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