Last November we learned that a beer named Tactical Nuclear Penguin might be the strongest beer in the world. The beer from Scottish brewery BrewDog had a 32 percent alcohol content. Now the title appears to have been taken by a Germany company who has come up with an even stronger brew.

Schorschbrau has created the Schorschbock 40, a whisky with a 40 percent alcohol by volume rate. The whisky-like brew has gone on sale in Scotland where it sells for £10 a glass. A review on RateBeer decribes the beer as being very strong and intense but with fruity beer notes.

The beer is sold in .33 liter ceramic bottles. Each one is signed and hand-numbered by the braumeister. Bottles are sealed with wax by hand and come in a wooden case with a transparent window on one side.Only around 40 bottles have been made.

Famed French luxury goods house Louis Vuitton has come out with an updated, ultra-luxe version of the classic Whisky Case portable bar that the firm first offered in 1955. Available by special order priced at about $35,000, it's wrapped in elegant Taiga leather, though you can order it in iconic monogram canvas as well. And whereas with its compartment for mixer the previous model was more of a Scotch and soda case, if you will, the new incarnation demands nothing less than the finest single malt. Constructed entirely by hand at Vuitton's atelier in France with fittings, hasps and locks of silvered solid brass, it comes with a silver ice bucket and tongs, silver cocktail sticks in a pull-out drawer, four crystal whiskey tumblers, a crystal decanter with a silver lid, and two crystal "Coupelle" dishes in separate compartments.

In a blind taste test organized as part of Scotland's Burn's Night festivities a Taiwanese Whisky shocked everyone by coming out as the clear winner over its Scottish and English rivals.

The contest took place in a hostelry north of Edinburgh and when the results were announced whisky connoisseur Charles MacLean exclaimed "Oh my God, is this an April Fools?" The scores tallied up with Taiwan's Kavalan receiving 27.5 points out of a possible 40, with the next place (the premium Scottish brand Langs) scoring only 22 points. The other competitors were Scotland's King Robert (20 points), England's St George (15.5 points), and Scotland's Bruchladdich X4+3 (only 4.5 points out of the possible 40).

Kavalan comes from Taiwan's first distillery, which was built by a firm from Banffshire, and uses Scottish malt in its production.

One of the signs that Spring must be just around the corner is not just that the days start to get longer, but that wedding and proposal specials start to proliferate. Many men must feel a lot of pressure to not only pick the right diamond engagement ring but to propose in such a manner that their fiance will have a great story to tell all of her friends, not to mention her mother. Some people are just naturally creative and others need a little bit of help and inspiration.

The Algonquin Hotel in New York City is prepared to help the creatively impaired, offering what is possibly the most expensive martini ever. The Grey Goose $10,000 proposal cocktail comes with a one-of-a-kind diamond ring placed in the glass. This specialty cocktail is served by a white gloved waiter in a crystal glass on a silver platter in the hotel's famous Blue Bar. The hotel arranges for clients to work one on one with a private jeweler to customize the engagement ring picking carat size, number of stones and the setting. The hotel needs at least 72 hours notice to set up this arrangement.

The hotel opened in 1902 and has long been famous for being the center of the city's literary and theatrical circles. If your intended is a big reader she might get a kick out of being proposed to in the same room where literary geniuses such as William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, and Derek Walcott spent their time.

As an aside, should the love of your life be more into spending time at the mall than the local library, Ivanka Trump is serving up a different offer at her Bridal Bar. Any diamond engagement ring bought comes with the "New York Proposal" package featuring a free night at one of the Trump Hotel Collection properties in New York City. The package also comes with complimentary long stemmed roses, champagne, dinner at the famed Jean Georges restaurant as well as breakfast in bed the next morning.

I'm Here: A Love Story in an Absolut World is the name of celluloid wizard Spike Jonze's new short film sponsored by Absolut Vodka.

I'm Here is a 30-minute love story between two robots, and debuted Friday night at Sundance. The film will be available for mass-viewing online in March (after a Berlin Film Festival screening), and if the website is any indication, it promises to be an emotional, gritty experience with a tone of desperate wonder set by original music from Sam Spiegel and Asku Matsumiya, similar to Where the Wild Things Are. Click on the "Book Your Ticket" to be taken to a stylistically engineered box office where you can join the list for the online premiere.

The film stars BAFTA winner Andrew Garfield and Eragon's Sienna Guillory, one of Maxim Magazine's "100 Sexiest Women." We tell you this because, as you can see the the preview above, you wouldn't otherwise know.

According to creativity-online, "The piece is TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York's latest addition to the 'Absolut World' campaign and marks an evolution of the brand's longstanding partnership and commitment to the arts, dating back to 1985, when Andy Warhol painted the vodka's distinctive bottle for a now legendary ad, leading to more famous interpretations by talents like Keith Haring and Helmut Newton. 'It's not just another film "brought to you by,"' says Figliulio. 'Absolut has been doing this the whole time.'"

[via creativity-online]

Essentially unchanged since 1894, the champagne bottle is a study in beauty, elegance, and scientific function. Everything about it, from the cork on the top to the indentation on the bottom, serves a crucial role in keeping your champagne safe and at its best.

The Cork Usually larger than corks used to seal wine, champagne corks are made in two parts: the bottom (inside the bottle) is a natural cork composite while the top (outside the bottle) is a mix of cork bits glued together. Corks are straight when first put into the bottle then swell when removed, creating the famous mushroom shape.

The Wire Cage The first champagne bottles used string to restrain the cork, but in 1844 Adolphe Jacquesson invented the metal cage system we still use today.

The Foil Foil was needed to deter rats and other pests from nibbling on the cork. Now it's a decorative and traditional part of the champagne experience.

The Rim It's there strictly to serve as an anchor for the wire cage.

The Glass The glass in champagne bottles is much thicker than that in wine bottles due to the pressure, which can be upwards of 70-100 pounds per square inch. The very first champagne bottles were not as thick and strong as they are today and bottles (especially when kept in volume in champagne cellars) were considered somewhat dangerous as they regularly exploded.

The Indentation The indentation in the bottom of the bottle isn't a sneaky way of serving less champagne per bottle, but instead a means of keeping the pressure from building up near the bottom. Also called the punt or 'kick-up,' it helps redistribute the pressure to keep the bottle from exploding.

The first new distillery in London for nearly 200 years recently began operating out of a tiny former brewery. Sipsmith is an independent micro-distillery producing small batch spirits in the true sense of the word; they never make more than 500 bottles at a time and often just half that number. After years working in the drinks industry, Sam Galsworthy, Jared Brown and Fairfax Hall struck out on their own to "pursue a passion for beautifully handmade spirits." They called themselves "sip-smiths" to celebrate the craft of distillation and artisanal methods. Since no one had done it for so long they had a hard time acquiring a license at first; when they finally obtained one from HM Revenue & Customs it was handwritten on a slip of paper.

The first thing the partners did was to commission a custom handmade copper-pot still from Germany's oldest distillery producers, Christian Carl, a small, family business in Bavaria who have been crafting stills since 1869; they named it Prudence. Of course they decided to start with the classics: a London Dry Gin and a Barley Vodka. Both are blended with pure water from Lydwell Spring in the Cotswolds, one of the sources of the River Thames, and each bottle is inscribed with a batch number which customers can be enter into the Sipsmith website to find out exactly what was happening and how the weather was at the distillery on the day it was made.



To create their London Dry Gin, Sipsmith distills English barley spirit with a 10 carefully selected botanicals from around the globe - Macedonian juniper berries, Bulgarian coriander seed, French angelica root, Spanish liquorice root, Italian orris root, Spanish ground almond, Chinese cassia bark, Madagascan cinnamon, Sevillian orange peel and Spanish lemon peel - samples for some of which were originally collected from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The result is a particularly dry gin with a zesty, citrus freshness. They have also made a quintessentially English mince pie-flavored version, available exclusively at the bar of the Oxo Tower in London.

To craft their Barley Vodka, they distill English barley spirit cut from the very top of the 'heart' run, and carefully blend it with the exceptionally pure water of Lydwell Spring. The result is a smooth, buttery spirit with a light, nutty finish and a hint of spice and pepper. For now Sipsmith remains an extremely small operation; Galsworthy makes deliveries to Harvey Nichols and London's Ivy restaurant on the back of his moped. However we have a feeling there are grand things to come.

Liquor brands often sponsor music shows but you don't get quite so many liquor-sponsored book tours. But would we expect anything less from a woman who once wrote a book titled "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea." To promote her latest book "Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang" Chelsea Handler is embarking on a 21 city tour presented by Belvedere Vodka. The tour begins March 10th in Chicago and winds up May 15 at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. The talk show host will be performing her comedy shows and also is expected to meet her fans at bookstores in cities along the route of the tour. Belvedere will host private after-parties for Chelsea's gigs across the country.

"We were thrilled to be chosen by Chelsea last year as her preferred & favorite vodka," Charles Gibb, President of Millennium, the vodka & rum division of Moet Hennessy, producer of Belvedere said in a press release. "As a vodka connoisseur, her decision to choose Belvedere is a true testament to the quality of our vodka, and we are delighted to be supporting her on this exciting tour". Tickets for the Live Nation-produced Belvedere Presents Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang tour go on sale beginning on January 15, 2010. Celebrity tie-ins seem to be a strategy for Belvedere which also has a deal with Bruce Willis for its Sobiewski brand.

If price is the yardstick, then Masa Super Premium can certainly claim to be "King of Green"– in more ways than one. Royal Blue Tea began taking reservations last month for the 36 bottles that is has pledged to make of what must be the finest green tea... ever.

To do that making, "rare" leaves are picked in the prefecture of Shizuoka, where a great deal of the world's green tea hails from. They are infused for three days in their pure, naked state, and the resulting elixir is poured into 750-ml wine bottles. The bottle is put in a wooden box and voilà, somewhere in there you ended up with ¥210,000 ($2,271 U.S.) worth of verdant, liquid health.

The tea will be shipping in February and March of this year, so get in touch with Royal Blue if you think you'd be better off with one bottle of Masa than two round trip tickets and a spa weekend at the Mandarin Oriental. If you opt for the latter, though, you might want to take along a bottle of Royal Blue's Fall In Love imperial-grade tea, which will only set you back ¥10,500 ($114 U.S.).

A one-of-a-kind bespoke cabinet designed by Viscount David Linley containing six extremely rare bottles of vintage single malt whisky from famed Speyside distillery The Macallan is on offer at Harrods in London for about $90,000. Macallan commissioned the royal cabinetmaker to produce the exquisite piece solely for Harrods, designed to be ultra luxurious and unique in every way. The six precious bottles are Macallan's prized 1937, 1940, 1948, 1955, 1966 and 1970 vintages. Handcrafted in Linley's workshop from solid English Burr Oak with mirrored interior panels the cabinet also includes six bespoke Linley-designed crystal whisky tumblers as well as a cigar humidor in the fold-out side compartments.

[via BornRich]

If you're a fan of jasmine tea, it will interest you to know that Jacques Cardin makes jasmine flavored cognac (pictured on the left). You can drink it neat or with ice, in a cocktail or, if you're fighting a cold, put it in your jasmine tea with honey for a clever hot toddy twist. We covered Jacques Cardin Cognac when it came out back in 2006, but as the days and nights get chillier, the Jasmin flavor sounds all the more enticing. One might call it "the tea drinker's cognac."

I spoke with Olivier Bugat, Vice President of Product Development at Sidney Frank Importing Company (who imports the JC cognac from France) about how Jacques Cardin Jasmin Cognac is made and why it's so special.

Luxist: How jasmine-flavored cognac made?

Olivier Bugat: Basically, it starts with the grapes. Once fermented, those grapes (now wine) are double distilled in copper pot stills. From there, the liquid is aged in French oak casks for a minimum of four years (because it is a VSOP). Finally, the master blender blends cognacs of different ages and crus to create the final product. The distillate of jasmin is added during the blending process.

L: What inspired it?

OB: After experimenting with various fruits, herbs, spices and flowers -- we, at Sidney Frank Importing Company, Inc., ultimately looked for the distillate that best complimented the characteristics of the eau de vie.

L: How do you recommend serving it?

OB: JC Jasmin can be enjoyed straight, in simple cocktails such as tonic and ginger-ale but is also a wonderful addition to classic cocktails such as the sidecar. The subtle jasmine and fresh herb finish makes JC Jasmin a cognac that can be mixed or stand alone.

If you're interested in trying a bottle of JC Jasmin Cognac (or the Apple or original flavors), visit internetwines.com.

Sam's Club has long been a place to get liquor at a lower price. Now it has introduce its own vodka, a a private label Member's Mark ultra premium French distilled vodka under the label Rue 33. It is the first spirit to be launched under the Member's Mark brand and joins several several control label wines.

Rue 33 is a wheat vodka from the Cognac region of France and is six times distilled and three times filtered. Sam's Club will sell 1.75 liters of Rue 33 premium vodka for about $28 and club membership is not required to purchase alcohol on location. Of more than 600 Sam's Clubs only around 240 are licensed to sell beer, wine and spirits.

Get your pucker ready, Napa Valley Limoncello Co. has created the first premium Limoncello made from organic Meyer Lemons. Napa Valley Limoncello Co. is a micro-distillery located in the heart of the famed wine growing region. Its new Napa Valley Limoncello XO Blend is rich and juicy with lemon flavors and a hint of vanilla and honey. It can be enjoyed either straight or mixed.

To create the limoncello, lemons are hand-peeled and then carefully examined to remove any trace of pith. Pith, the thin, white, pulp-like substance found on the back of the lemon peel, can add unwanted bitterness. The peels are infused in a spirit to draw out all the essential oils. The Napa Valley Limoncello recently won the platinum prize at the 2009-2010 World Beverage Competition in the Spirits/Liqueur category. The judges of this annual competition are industry professionals from six different countries who judged beverages from over thirty different countries.

Who is Earl Magnus and why do we want to know about him? Earl Magnus was the legendary Earl of Orkney who ruled in the 11th century. His name is also on a new limited edition 15 year-old single malt whisky from Highland Park, The Earl Magnus Edition 1. The whisky is a natural strength bottling taken which measures 52.6% abv,. The tasting notes say that the Earl Magnus delivers the signature heather peat smokiness Highland Park is famous for along with delicate notes of ginger, lemon and vanilla.

It is bottled in a light brown bottle with a historically inspired label that depicts Earl Magnus in a stained glass window. It comes in a wooden gift box etched with Highland Park branding and the tale of Earl Magnus – the story of his life, his murder at the hands of a cousin, his canonization and the building of St Magnus cathedral. The whisky is meant to celebrate the history of Orkney and will be available from late December in the UK selling for £85.

As we head inexorably into winter here on the East Coast, it's time for The Classicist to take a look back, raise a glass and celebrate the best of the season. Perhaps you're looking for a last-minute gift for the holidays or just want to treat yourself once the dust settles. Here's our rundown of seasonal favorites, some we've mentioned before and others appearing for the first time. See the gallery for full pix:

1. Barbour Dunelm jacket: A slimmed down version of the classic foul weather parka style jacket in signature waxed cotton with an attached hood, utility pockets and a two way zip under a studded-front storm flap, from the classic British outerwear company. Founded in 1894 and holders of the Royal Warrant, they've opened a new chapter in classic sporting style with updated designs.

2. LINCS by David Chu cardigan: From Chu's new collection of clothing for the "gentleman adventurer", a weighty cashmere cardigan in a heathery loden weave with a leather buckle at the collar and suede trim under the placket. The epitome of Chu's classic and rugged yet elegant ethos.

3. Ralph Lauren tartan duffel: Part of Lauren's luxe new Holiday Collection, rooted in the spirit of 1930's Sun Valley, the famous Idaho ski resort frequented by socialites and celebrities. Tartan plaid wool with saddle leather trim embodies wintry sophistication.

4. Wolverine Gentry Upland boots: From the 125-year-old company's new vintage-inspired 1000 Mile Collection, finished in rough full-grain leather with loden Pendleton wool inserts and lug soles. Equally at home in the field or on the town.

5. Caesar Guerini Apex shotgun: The rich heritage of fine Italian shotgun makers meets British lines and classic style in the Apex field and sporting models, blending beauty - Oiled Turkish Circassian walnut stock and intricate engraving - with performance and lasting value.