MEXICO: Tequila-makers get into Guiness book of World Records for most expensive tequila.

Forget about the tequila you slam down on the bar or knock back at parties in throat-burning shots with salt and lemon. If you're paying six figures, you might prefer to savor it in small sips. An impossibly upmarket brand of tequila -- 100 percent blue Agave lovingly aged for six years and sold in a limited edition platinum bottle with fancy artwork on the label -- went on sale in Mexico on Thursday night (October 26, 2006) for $225,000 a bottle. The bottles have drowned out the competition as the world's most expensive in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Tequila Ley .925 has produced 66 bottles of the "Pasion Azteca" tequila, half of them pure platinum bottles and half of them gold and platinum-decorated bottles that sell for the slightly less extravagant price of $150,000. For those on a smaller budget, there are 999 bottles of the same tequila in silver and gold bottles priced at $25,000. "This is an example of how with work, effort, dedication, vision, illusion and dreams we can make whatever we want. Today we are presenting the most expensive bottle in the Guinness Book of World Records. It could have been a whiskey, a cognac, a champagne, but we won it with tequila and it was won by the Mexicans," Fernando Altamirano, chief executive of producer Tequila Ley .925, told a launch party for the liquor. Showing off one of each type, Altamirano said they had already been sold to a collector, but declined to give away the buyer's identity. Altamirano, whose company has won awards for its stylish bottles, said his next goal was to create a million-dollar tequila bottle made from diamond-encrusted platinum and auction it at Sotheby's next year.

ITN Source | November 4, 2006

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