Liberal Talk Radio

As the market for high-end cocktails becomes more and more immune to economic downturns, the time is nigh for all-out class war. Meet the enemy:

George Santiago, a 23-year-old nightclub promoter, wanted to impress Danielle DiCantz, 22, whom he had met at a club, on their first date. So on a recent Thursday night he took her to Reserve, a lounge and dance club that is a favorite of the trend-setting crowd here.

To break the ice, Mr. Santiago ordered a $350 bottle of Dom Pérignon. After they had swilled the Champagne dry, Mr. Santiago returned to the bar. This time he ordered her an exotic concoction called the Reserve Ruby Red.

Served in a traditional martini glass, the cocktail is made with super-premium Grey Goose L’Orange vodka, Hypnotiq liqueur, orange and pomegranate juices and topped off with Dom Pérignon. The coup de grâce: a one-carat ruby affixed to the stirrer. And the bar tab for a Ruby Red? An eye-popping $950.

Was she impressed?

“It was the best 950 bucks I ever spent,” Mr. Santiago said. “Let’s put it that way.”

And lest you get the idea that expensive drinks are simply used to get girls into bed, rest assured that all of the usual suspects are imbibing basically the liquid equivalent of your monthly rent:

Julie Clark, 28, an options trader from Chicago, celebrated one of her biggest trading windfalls with a $135 Champs-Élysées cocktail at Le Passage. The Champs-Élysées is made with Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac, Grand Marnier, orange juice and sour mix; it is served in a Bottega del Vino crystal cognac snifter, which the drinker can keep. “I wanted to celebrate,” Ms. Clark said. “It was great. I really liked it.”

Does the idiocy of mixing expensive cognac with orange juice occur to any of these morons? Never mind . . .

But regardless, you know we need a nice, thick recession when people start saying stuff like this:

“People are drinking less, but they’re drinking better,” said Mark Grossich, owner and operator of the World Bar in Trump World Tower in Manhattan. “You don’t find a lot of generic drinkers anymore.”

When the World Bar opened three years ago, it introduced the World Cocktail. The $50 mixture of Remy XO; Veuve Clicquot Champagne; Pineau des Charentes, a sweet aperitif; white grape juice; freshly squeezed lemon juice; Angostura bitters; and 23-carat edible liquid gold was billed as the world’s most expensive cocktail.

“We started the trend of very expensive cocktails,” Mr. Grossich said. “We thought: ‘What the heck? Where better than in a Trump building to create something excessive?’ ”

But now, Mr. Grossich said, cocktail prices have “gotten out of hand.” “People are coming up with all kinds of ridiculous combinations to push the prices of cocktails through the roof,” he said. “It’s hard to ratchet up the price up to $1,000 and have the cost justify the ingredients. They’re priced to the point where they get to be novelty items.” [Emphasis shaken and stirred for your pleasure]

Oh sure, they’re just now getting to be novelty items . . .