The Architect's Elixir

One-hundred and fifty collectors have the opportunity to acquire HENNESSY X.O decanters created by the great Frank Gehry...

- Jared Paul Stern

No less an authority than Vanity Fair once called him “the most important architect of our age.” It was no exaggeration — Frank Gehry, designer of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao among other masterworks, has more than lived up to the moniker. On his library shelf he has the pleasure of gazing upon the Pritzker Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Légion d’honneur, among other achievements. And alongside them he can now place a decanter of one of the world’s finest cognacs, that is a sculptural masterpiece in its own right.

Hence its name, the Hennessy X.O X Frank Gehry Masterpiece. Limited to just 150 signed and numbered decanters priced at around US$17,000 apiece, the vessels of precious elixir have all the presence and panache of one of his iconic buildings. Truly a merger of the avant-garde and the traditional, they contain Hennessy X.O, the cognac created in 1870 by Maurice Hennessy for his family and friends, the first “Extra Old” (X.O) cognac ever; the collaboration coincides with its 150th anniversary. Gehry’s creation in gold and glass is an evolution of the famed X.O carafe-shaped decanter, created in 1947 by Maurice Hennessy’s greatgrandson, Gérald de Geoffre. Gehry drew inspiration from the rich soil, twisted grapevines, and winding Charente River of France’s Cognac region, home to the Hennessy Maison, enveloping the decanter in a crinkled sleeve of 24-carat gold-dipped bronze.