A BOTTLE of cognac in the Netherlands was last week officially been named the oldest of its kind in the world.
Lars Janssen is a collector who has a bottle of Jules Robin Cognac.
And it dates back to 1696, making it 328 years old.
The Guinness World Records have confirmed it is the oldest bottle, beating the previous holder, a bottle of Gautier from 1762.
It was one of just three known remaining bottles and after it sold in 2020 for €131,000, it is the oldest cognac sold at auction.
With that in mind, NICOLA BARDON looks at some fascinating facts about alcohol throughout the years, from the oldest to the most expensive.
Largest glass of beer
BACK in July 2014, Ed Dupuy and Angus Wood from the Stod Fold Brewing company in the UK poured the world’s tallest glass of beer.
While a pint glass is just 0.568 of a litre, they poured 2082 litres into the huge glass – which would work out at 3,664 pints of beer.
The glass itself was taller than both men, standing at 7ft 4 inches tall and was 3ft 8 inches wide.
It took them an hour to fill the glass and they still retain the Guinness World Record.
World’s oldest wine
IN 2019, workers were carrying out house renovations at 53 Sevilla Street in Carmona, Spain, when they came across a family mausoleum with untouched chambers, one containing a 1st century glass urn.
And this year, they confirmed what was in the urn was five litres of wine, mixed together with the cremated ashes of the deceased and a gold ring at the bottom.
A team of chemists said it is more than 2,000 years old and beats the previous record holder of the Speyer wine bottle from the 4th Century.
Oldest whiskey
ACCORDING to the Guinness World Records, the world’s oldest whiskey is the Baker’s Pure Rye Whiskey, distilled in 1847, that is owned by American collector Adam Herz.
But in 2022, behind a hidden cellar door in Scotland’s Blair Castle, about 40 bottles of whiskey were found.
Carbon dating technology found it dated to the early 1800s, and a label nearby said it was distilled in 1833, bottled in 1841 before being rebottled in 1932.
Most expensive bottle
IF you had a spare €32million, what would you spend it on?
Would it be a house, island, plane? Or just one bottle of D’Amalfi Limoncello Supreme.
The Italian liqueur comes with a bottle designed with three diamonds on the neck totalling 13 carts.
There is then an 18.5 carat diamond on the bottle’s body, and just two of these bottles are in existence.
One bottle belongs to an anonymous Italian buyer, and the other’s whereabouts remain a mystery.
Oldest sign of booze
THE first written reference to beer have been found to date back as far as 5000 BC, as part of the daily wages given to workers at the Temple of Erech in Mesopotamia.
But the oldest chemical evidence of alcohol is 2,000 years before that, when pottery jars found in China showed residue of the fruits and wines made.
The compounds discovered showed a mixture of rice beer, honey mead and hawthorn and grape wine.
Largest beer tasting
IN July 2022, in Barcelona, 1,243 people gathered to taste three different kind of beers.
They got the record for the most people gathered to taste the beers, beating the previous holder in London in 2016.
And despite the attempts by the University of Tulsa to try and come and claim the record, the Spanish managed to hold on to their title.