The Most Expensive Cocktail In Australia Is A $10,000 Classic

Many of you have probably awoken after a night of alcohol-fueled indulgence, your body aching and your head throbbing in pain. It's not often that you wake up to find your drinking has also put your wallet under considerable duress. However, ordering the wrong drink could leave you indebted as well as inebriated. The Diamonds Are Forever cocktail at the Ritz-Carlton in Tokyo, for example, costs $19,000 USD — though to be fair, it's paired with a diamond ring.

Recently, another lavish cocktail has entered the conversation, with a price tag that might shock you. In honor of Woodford Reserve Old Fashioned Week, which took place from November 5 through November 14, Sydney, Australia's cocktail joint Dean & Nancy on 22 and Melbourne, Australia's Sky Bar introduced the Woodford Reserve Gold Fashioned, per The Drinks Business. The drink features myriad expensive ingredients — as well it should, given its eye-popping cost of over $10,000 USD.

As the name would suggest, the Woodford Reserve Gold Fashioned is modeled after the old fashioned. The featured spirit in the cocktail is Woodford Reserve Baccarat Edition. According to Reserve Bar, this exclusion-edition version of Woodford's classic Kentucky whiskey is "finished in XO Cognac barrels" and will cost you a little over $2,000 USD. Now the $10,000 USD price tag is starting to make a little more sense.

The other type of booze featured in this expensive creation is a reduction of Château d'Yquem Sauternes, per The Drinks Business. As The Wine Cellar Insider explains, Chateau at d'Yquem is a sweet wine grown on a world-renowned French chateau, as it has been for hundreds of years. Wine-Searcher tells us that the average cost of a bottle will run you around $500 USD, though certain years seem to sell for prices well into the upper $1,000 USD range.

According to news.com.au, the Woodford Reserve Gold Fashioned features a dash of saffron bitters. Qaenet Saffron tells us that saffron is a finicky plant that needs perfect weather conditions to flourish, and that harvesting its flowers is an incredibly labor-intensive process, which is why it's so pricey. As 90% of the world's saffron is grown in the Khorasan region of Iran, the nation's ongoing political crisis, as well as last year's inconsistent weather in the region, will likely make saffron even more expensive.

If you do order the Woodford Reserve Gold Fashioned, you won't be going home empty-handed. Per news.com.au, along with the cocktail, you're also given an entire bottle of Woodford Reserve Baccarat Edition, which will come in handy if you want to forget your sorrows over spending $10,000 USD on a drink. Additionally, you'll be going home with a pair of elegant baccarat drinking glasses, which are made of hand-cut glass. As if the cocktail wasn't luxurious enough, the finishing touch on the Woodford Reserve Gold Fashioned is a delicate sprinkling of bonafide 24-carat gold flakes.