You may be wondering how I came to be sipping on a $150 glass of Cognac earlier today. The answer is: funny, funny story.
While visiting my dear friend, Tatyana, in Fort Collins, Colorado this weekend, our love of the outdoors brought us to Estes Park. The
Stanley hotel is located here; the Overlook Hotel in the Stephen King novel
The Shining is based on this particular inn. Tatyana insisted that we stop in for a look around. There was a tour going on while we were there; however, we elected to give ourselves the "self tour" which ultimately led us to the decadent bar.
The barroom was gorgeous, and we decided there was no way we could avoid stopping in for a refreshing beverage before our hike. We sat down beside two average joe's at the bar, and contemplated what to order. Tatyana said something about beer, but I felt that this tavern was a bit too exquisite to settle for our usual beverage. Given our newfound discovery of our mutual love of Cognac, this would have to be the beverage of our choosing.
We looked at the menu, and Tatyana commented, "how difficult is it to put prices on the menu?" At that point, the two fellas next to us told us we ought to just order the Louis XIII. We asked if it was good, and they told us they'd been drinking it all day. Had a hint of sarcasm been noted in their voices, we may have caught on.
But we simply. didn't. know.
We ordered it up, and the bartender said, "really?" He claimed to have mentioned the price at this point but that assertion is still a cause for speculation. We would have reconsidered had we known that bottle was worth two thousand dollars... We got the drink, and at that point the cost of the carefully measured shot is revealed to us by our sarcastic neighbors. The look of utter shock on my face as I turned to Tatyana was priceless. She began giggling a nervous laugh...
A lot of things run through your mind when a very expensive mistake is suddenly upon you. I was reeling; so much was going through my mind. I was simultaneously thinking about the fact that this drink cost as much as my plane ticket for the visit,the costs of my imminent move from my present apartment, the statement that Tatyana had made to me in the car about life being so short... Life... So short... Meh, you do only live once. If it hadn't happened this way, we would have lived our whole lives without trying it.
The bartender catches wind that we did not "hear" the price, and he came over to us looking very concerned. We had already come to terms with our purchase by then, and were enjoying our drink with loud laughter at the humor of the situation. He told us that he's only seen old people buy this drink for their retirement, to which Tatyana made a comment about how she's glad she got to drink it while she was still young. The barkeep comped us several beers and a cigar (which we smoked at the summit of our hike), and we laughed all day long about the experience.
Well, this is a food blog after all, so...
Remy Martin's
Louis XIII has strong maple syrup on the nose. It is not very sweet, and the complexity of the flavors was unexpected based on the aroma. It is light and smoother than anything I have ever drank. A delightful Cognac.
So was it worth $150? I was unsure of this for most of the day. The fact that this Cognac is about a century old and is aged in barrels that are several hundreds of years old might justify the wallet-flattening price. The handblown crystal bottle is glorious, and the pamphlet that comes with the bottle commends you for purchasing the liquor as if you were indeed a king.
Worth the cost? Probably not, but I'm not really concerned. If today taught me one thing, it is that a neat experience that few people get to have in their lifetime is priceless. (Joking about how some wealthy people probably have never tried it is kinda funny as well, "I bet he's never even had a
sip of Louis...") Furthermore, a good laugh and great friendship trumps the evil green any day.
