The world’s most expensive bottle of champagne: $2.5 million!

The story of the bottle of champagne sold for $2.5 million

We have to talk about it because everyone’s talking about it. So, this is the world’s most expensive bottle of champagne! Two investors may have gone a step further by paying $2.5 million for a bottle of champagne (once again, a magnum!). But of course, this isn’t just any bottle of champagne, as it contains NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – digital assets that can be bought and sold. Brothers Giovanni and Piero Bono bought a $2.5 million magnum of Champagne Avenue Foch at a private auction, the Wall Street Journal reported. The limited-edition bottle was created by Shammi Shinh, a self-proclaimed champagne connoisseur and NFT trader, in collaboration with the artist Mig, who is behind The Bored Ape Yacht Club and The Sneaky Vampire Syndicate NFT collections.

The bottle features five NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, and the purchase includes a digital transfer of ownership. The images depict cartoon creatures including monkeys, bats and vampires. One is from the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT series. In total, the five NFTs cost 26.22 ether at Champagne Avenue Foch, equivalent to around $28,000 at current exchange rates. The price of the bottle is quoted in ether, but due to the recent volatility of cryptocurrencies, buyers are paid in US dollars. On that note, just for the record, non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have evolved from a relatively obscure blockchain technology into a market worth around $44 billion last year.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the brothers are Italian and their families have a background in the fashion industry. Giovanni has been an early investor in crypto since 2014. He has spent the last six years working in tech start-ups, co-founding three companies. His current project, Quota, aims to digitise the property rental market in Southern Europe. Piero has worked in the fashion industry and owns the eyewear brand Good’s.

The seller, Shammi Shinh, specialises in high-end bottles of champagne. A London-based businessman with an interest in champagne and biotechnology, and a keen NFT trader, he claims to have already set a record for the most expensive bottle of champagne ever sold: a platinum-labelled bottle sold by Champagne Goût de Diamants, featuring a 19-carat diamond, which fetched $1.9 million in 2013, according to a press release. A bottle belonging to Mr Shinh was featured in the final scene of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s “Justice League”, having been chosen in 2017 by Jesse Eisenberg’s supervillain, Lex Luthor.

Among non-NFT, non-diamond-encrusted champagnes, the record price for a bottle at the London auction house Christie’s was £42,875, or approximately $51,000. This wasa bottle of the 1874 Bauerflower vintage, which was auctioned last year.

It is worth noting that the champagne is made from 2017 Premier Cru grapes, a blend of Pinot Noir, Meunier and Chardonnay from Champagne Allouchery-Deguerne in Chamery. For the record, and for champagne enthusiasts, the starting price for an Allouchery-Deguerne champagne was around 15 euros.