Historic $77,500 bottle of cognac broken by mistake

(AP)

Talk about a mistake of historic proportions.

A customer at London’s Playboy Club accidentally broke a bottle of  224-year-old cognac wroth more than $77,000 that was slated to be featured in the world’s most expensive cocktail and mixed in front of judges from Guinness World Records.

The U.K.'s Evening Standard reports that the Coganc, a Clos de Griffier Vieux from 1788, was smashed after a businessman, who had ordered two glasses of the brandy at $7,800 a pop, asked to look at the bottle.  But the bottle accidentally went sailing and smashed the floor when the customer stood up.

World renowned mixologist Salvatore Calabrese was to mix the potentially record-breaking cocktail.

“We all just froze, then it sunk in. I’ve been heartbroken. Not because of the value of the bottle, but because it is a piece of history that has been lost,” Calabrese told the Standard.

The bottle had previously been in the cellars of Paris restaurant La Tour d’Argent before appearing on the menu at the Playboy Club, reports The Drinks Business, and was once part of a record-breaking auction in 2009.

As for the businessman, he surprisingly has not been banished from the Playboy Club for good. The Standard reports that he is a regular at the club, so all has been forgiven. But the bottle was not insured because it had been opened.

In this case, there might be just cause to bawl over spilt brandy.