Whose round is it? Hopefully not ours if any of these drinks are going on the tab. Whether it’s The Macallan whisky, whose Scottish single malts regularly smash records at auction, dizzyingly expensive vodka encased in diamond-encrusted bottles or the highest valued wines, these are the most expensive drinks ever sold – strictly for those with bottomless bank accounts.

The only bottle on this list attached to one specific, head-thumping bar bill, this 30-litre beast was sold for a whopping £125,000 ($153,306) at a nightclub in Liverpool, England, in March 2012. The Armand de Brignac Midas was then the largest and priciest bottle of Champagne available, and financier Alex Hope was the proud (and possibly hungover) recipient of what was reported as the world’s most expensive bar bill – £204,000 ($250,000) in total. The champers, known as Ace of Spades and owned by rapper Jay-Z, required two waiters to bring it to the table.

What happens when you pour some of the rarest and most revered single malt whiskies into the most exquisitely crafted, limited-edition crystal decanters? Record-breaking prices, it seems, as the collaboration has broken several auction records and raised some serious cash. This bottle, a 50-year-old single malt whisky, achieved £144,000 ($176,600) at Christie’s London in late 2018, surpassing the high estimate of £85,000 ($105,000).

A rare appearance on the list from a whisky not produced by The Macallan, this bottle is one of only 24 from Springbank Distillery’s 1919 vintage, hence the high price achieved at auction. The distillery in Campbeltown, Scotland, was established in 1828 on the set of a previously illicit still and remains in the same family. The rare bottle, once the world’s most expensive, reached £183,750 ($225,360) at Christie’s London in late 2021, just under the £200,000-£280,000 ($245,300-$343,400) estimate.

Usually auction houses’ estimates are bang on the money, but not this time when a bottle of 1869 Château Lafite-Rothschild went for £195,642 ($233,972/HK$1.8m) – roughly 28 times the estimate – at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in late 2010. At that time, it was by far the most expensive 750ml bottle of wine ever sold at auction. The vintage is particularly prized because it was the first produced after Baron James Rothschild bought the winery in the Medoc wine region of Bordeaux the previous year.

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The 1947 vintage of Château Cheval Blanc is considered among the finest wines of all time, fermented from the yields of a hot post-war summer harvested at the clay-rich vineyards in Saint-Emilion, France. Renowned wine critic Robert Parker described the Cabernet Franc and Merlot blend as having a “huge nose of fruitcake, chocolate, leather, coffee and Asian spices”. The price reflects all of that: a six-litre bottle broke records at Christie’s in Geneva in 2010, selling at an incredible £195,509 ($239,782/CHF230,000).

Rosé all day? Perhaps not at these prices. Armand de Brignac is renowned for its increasingly large bottles of Champagne and its 30-litre midas of rosé, the equivalent to 40 standard bottles of wine, took it to new heights – more than four feet (1.2m) in fact. The cork was popped for rapper Jay Z’s after-show party at Hakkasan at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in late 2013, priced at £224,224 ($275,000). No fear, though – it’s usually a slightly cheaper £70,000 ($57,075) or so per bottle.

There are ony 12 bottles of The Dalmore 62, aged for 62 years in sherry casks dating back to 1868, and it has only been increasing in value since launching in 2002. A bottle sold at Singapore’s Changai Airport in 2011 for £125,000 ($153,306), five times the price reached at auction nine years earlier. Then, in May 2020, it surpassed that again – selling for £266,200 ($326,481) at Sotheby’s London.

This big, striking bottle proved the value of a collaboration between Scottish distillery The Macallan and French crystal maker Lalique. The decanter went for £375,066 ($460,000) at Sotheby’s New York in 2010, setting a record for the most expensive whisky sold at auction. It’s since been surpassed by other bottles and sets from the collaboration.

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Screaming Eagle is a legendary winery even by Californian standards, awarded a near-perfect 99 points for its first vintage in 1992 by wine critic Robert Parker. It reached new heights of fame when a lot of six magnum bottles of its Cabernet Sauvignon, from that first year, sold for £407,545 ($500,000) to Shanghai billionaire David Li at a 2008 charity auction in Napa Valley. The wine is made in small quantities at the winery in Napa’s Oakville appellation, and only 175 cases of the 1992 vintage were produced.

This bottle of Romanée-Conti Grand Cru sold for £454,972 ($558,000) at Sotheby’s New York in 2018, setting a world record for the priciest single bottle of wine. Another fetched a little less and, in total, the auction of rare wines from revered Burgundian estate Domaine de la Romanée-Conti raised £5.95 million ($7.3m) – more than five times the high estimate set by the auction house. This bottle of red is particularly valuable as only 600 are believed to have been produced in 1945, and the vines were torn out and replanted after this vintage.

This big, beautiful beast – a bottle crafted by French crystal maker Lalique containing six litres of some of the world’s best and most complex whisky, aged 25-75 years in sherry casks – sold for £512,047 ($628,000) at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in 2014. The sale broke the previous record – set in 2010 by a bottle from the same collaboration – to become the most expensive whisky sold at auction.

Produced by Japan’s oldest commercial distillery, founded in 1923, The Yamazaki 55 Year Old is considered by many to be one of the finest whiskies from the country. It’s certainly among the rarest and oldest, which helps to explain the record-breaking £644,050 ($789,895/HK$6.2m) this gold-dusted bottle fetched at Bonhams Fine & Rare Wine and Whisky Sale in Hong Kong in August 2019. One of 150 bottles released, it smashed its pre-sale estimate by more than 10 times.

The Six Pillars collection is another treasure yielded from The Macallan’s collaboration with Lalique. It’s made up of six whiskies aged 50-65 years, each encased in a beautiful bottle from the renowned French crystal maker. The full set, displayed in a walnut cabinet, went for £665,500 ($816,200) at auction in 2019, while another was recently sold to a private collector by luxury retailer Le Clos at Dubai Airport, surpassing the previous record by a few hundred pounds.

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Rare, collectible whiskies often surpass expectations when they come up for sale. When The Macallan Red Collection went under the hammer at Sotheby’s London in late 2020, the auction house gave a broad estimate of £200,000-£800,000 ($238,000-$955,000), and it came very close to the top figure, selling for £756,400 ($927,687). There are only two sets of the whiskies, which tell the story of the legendary Scottish distillery and include the two oldest vintages ever released (74 and 78 years old).

You can get your hands on a standard 750ml bottle of this Napa Valley Cabernet for around £150 ($185), but this bottle – a whopping six litres – was one-of-a-kind, hence the hefty price tag. It went for a staggering £813,340 ($1m) in November 2021 at an auction held in New Orleans for celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse’s charitable foundation. Lagasse is pictured with the bottle.

The Macallan’s case 263 is responsible for the majority of the brown stuff that makes this list. The ex-sherry cask was filled at the Scottish distillery in 1926 to be used in a blend, although was somehow forgotten and remained untouched for six decades. However, that turned out to be a blessing as this bottle – one of a dozen designed by pop artist Sir Peter Blake – reached a staggering £847,694 ($1.01m/HK$7.96m) at Bonhams in Hong Kong in May 2018, a record only beaten later by other bottles from the same vintage.

A further dozen bottles of single malt from the legendary cask 263 were given a boost with labels designed by Italian painter Valerio Adami, whose abstract featured a nude figure admiring a bottle of whisky. It was rumoured that one of these was destroyed in an earthquake in Japan, which pushed the value up even more – one sold for £848,750 ($1.04m) at Bonhams in Edinburgh in October 2018, setting a new record for the highest priced single bottle.

This cask of The Macallan single malt lay forgotten in the distiller's warehouse after the owner, who purchased it in 1988, forgot about it. It was originally purchased for around £5,000 ($6,130) – earning the original buyer a staggering profit when it was sold for around £1 million ($1.23m) at auction in April 2022. Filled with enough liquid gold to fill around 534 standard whisky bottles, it was put up for sale after the distillery reminded the owner of its existence.

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The Dalmore Decades No.6 Collection is rare in many respects, not least because it’s one of a few whiskies on this list not distilled by The Macallan. The selection of six releases – from 1951, 1967, 1979, 1980, 1995 and 2000 (each year representing a key moment in The Dalmore’s history) – was curated by master distiller Richard Paterson. The singular Scotch achieved £913,668 ($1.11m/HK$8.75m) at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in October 2021.

It’s not surprising that the world’s largest bottle of whisky attracted big spenders when it went up for auction in May 2022. Yet, what is surprising is that it going under the hammer at only £1.1 million ($1.4m) means it isn’t actually the most expensive bottle ever sold. Standing at a lofty 5ft 11in (1.8m), it does officially hold the Guinness World Record for the biggest bottle though, containing 311 litres of a 1989 The Macallan single malt.

The name translates as 'taste of diamonds', which gives some idea to why these bubbles are so pricey. In fact, it’s believed this particular limited-edition bottle – priced at £1.2 million ($1.46m) – was the world’s most expensive single bottle of Champagne when it was released in June 2013. Shammi Shinh, founder of London’s Prodiguer Brand, collaborated with British Nigerian luxury product designer Alexander Amosu on a bespoke bottle with a logo of 18-carat white gold and a 19-carat diamond.

In November 2018, one of few remaining bottles of The Macallan’s cask 263 became the first to pass the £1 million mark, going for £1.2 million ($1.46m) at Christie’s auction house in London. It broke the two previous records for the same vintage, matured in ex-sherry casks for six decades before being bottled in 1986. This bottle, though, was even more special – it was hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon, whose design depicts the distillery’s Speyside estate, making it a complete one-off.

This set of Japanese whiskies set a new record when it went for a staggering £1.24 million ($1.52m/HK$11.89m) in November 2020. The auction, held at Bonhams in Hong Kong, positioned Hanyu Distillery’s Full Card Series as the most expensive set of Japanese whisky ever sold. The collection features 54 bottles, each representing a playing card, while the contents is drawn from casks conserved before the distillery closed in 2000, with the rare bottles released between 2005-2014.

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You’re unlikely to expect a bargain on a bottle of whisky with an estimate of at least £350,000 ($427,173) but, as it turns out, that was a rather conservative guide price. This 1926 bottle actually went for more than four times that amount, reaching a record-breaking £1.5 million ($1.9m) at a 2019 auction at Sotheby’s London. It was one of 14 bottles with the Fine & Rare label, all containing 60-year-old single malt from the Scottish distillery’s 263 cask.

No one expects Cognac to be cheap but most people would find £1.63 million ($2m) a bottle a little on the pricey side. Containing arguably the world’s finest Cognac, distilled and aged for more than 100 years at Maison Dudognon in the Champagne region of France, this one-off bottle was produced by Ley .925 – which also released the world’s most expensive tequila. The platinum bottle is dipped in 24-carat yellow gold.

With a bottle made using 4.4 pounds (2kg) of platinum and embellished with 4,100 pristine white diamonds, it’s perhaps no surprise that Tequila Ley .925’s Ley Diamante is the world’s priciest agave spirit. It’s reportedly valued at £2.85 million ($3.5m). The contents is rather premium too – the tequila is Premium Extra Añejo, made in Mexico with top-quality agave and matured in barrels for seven years.

You really do have to be a millionaire to splash a whopping £3.06 million ($3.75m) on a bottle of clear spirits. Billionaire Vodka, by designer and self-described “king of luxury” Leon Verres, is sold as a methuselah (six litres). It’s made with spring water from the grounds of an English castle, then triple distilled through ice, Nordic birch charcoal, and crushed diamonds and gems. Much of the price, though, is down to the platinum and rhodium bottle, encrusted with diamonds and with a solid gold label.

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Each bottle of Royal Dragon Vodka is filled with clear, small-batch spirit. Oh, and a dragon. But, the Dutch-owned company took things up a few notches (and a few zeros) by releasing The Eye of the Dragon vodka in 2017. Valued at £4.49 million ($5.5m), it was the most expensive bottle of vodka, and the contents are rare too, made in a century-old copper pot still and distilled five times. The bottle, which is a six-litre beast sporting a yellow diamond, thousands of smaller diamonds and 18-carat gold, is even rarer.

Isabella’s Islay claims to be the world’s most expensive whisky at £5.22 million ($6.4m) for 750ml. However, the fact that the single malt, from the Scottish island of Islay, is inside a bottle – or rather a decanter – of fine English crystal encrusted with around 8,500 diamonds does give it something of an advantage in that department. The price was last verified in 2016 and it certainly isn’t widely on sale (just in case you were planning to rush out and buy a bottle on a whim).

Forget the complimentary shots you get at Italian restaurants. This limoncello is considered the finest in the world, and so it should be because it’s also the most expensive spirit ever sold (that we know of). The contents is made with aromatic lemon peels from the Amalfi coast, although once again it’s the bottle – designed by Stuart Hughes of Liverpool, England – that’s really valuable, with three 13-carat diamonds and one giant 18.5-carat diamond. There are only two bottles, commissioned by an anonymous Italian client who kept one for themselves. The other is for sale at a cool £27 million ($33.1m).

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