Struth! Whisky decanter of the stars

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says if you are heading to the UK and want to pick up a really nice decanter of a truly good whisky for that special someone you’re catching up with, drop into London’s Luxury Beverage Company and ask about their Isabella’s Original and Isabella’s Special Editions.

And adhering to the axiom that if you have to ask the price you can’t afford it, when you do blurt out the question, you will find that no, you most likely can afford neither the Original nor even its much cheaper cousin, the Special Edition.

Because while both contain the equivalent of a bottle of an Islay Very Old Single Malt Whisky, in the case of the Isabella’s Original it comes in a fine English Crystal decanter encrusted with over 8,500 diamonds, almost 300 rubies and the equivalent of two bars of white gold, while the cheaper Isabella’s Special Edition is merely coated in-part with white gold and with its named spelled out in diamonds.

And the price? The Original will set you back 3.8-million GBPounds (AU$5.8m) and the cheaper Special Edition just 450,000 GBPounds (or AU$689,000) – although if you ask nicely you might at least get the whisky component duty-free.

We’ll drink to that!