SALT LAKE CITY — It is the drink for the one percent.
Utah’s liquor control authority got a recent shipment of two bottles of Courvoisier L’Esprit, a coveted cognac that sits in a crystal bottle. Under Utah liquor laws, the drink is being sold at a relative bargain price of $5,395.68. State law mandates that it be sold a cost, plus an 86% markup.
A bottle of Couvoisier L’Esprit on sale at the Utah State Liquor Store on Harris Ave., in Salt Lake City on May 28, 2015.
In other states, bottles of this Courvoisier have sold for as much as $8,000.
“We go by statute on pricing our products, which is why sometimes you get odd numbers,” DABC spokeswoman Vickie Ashby told FOX 13. “So there are people from out of state that will come to Utah to purchase this product because it is actually less expensive.”
The DABC has faced a similar situationevery time it gets a shipment of the coveted Pappy Van Winkle bourbon. Unlike other states, where retail can command a hundreds of dollars a bottle, Utah law saw them sold to the public at bargain basement prices.
The two bottles of Courvoisier L’Esprit were placed behind locked glass cases at liquor stores in Park City and Salt Lake City’s Harris Avenue store. Ashby said the DABC anticipated the bottles would sell quickly. Three bottles of wine, priced at $5,000, were snatched up within hours of them being listed by the agency.
