1800 Tequila has put a price of $11,000 on its newest Colección Tequila release, a limited run of 50 nickel decanters designed by the late Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg. The bottle, called Mono Laberinto Doble, went up for pre-order on the brand's website this week, according to a company announcement carried by PR Newswire and reported by The Spirits Business.

The release is the latest entry in a Colección series that Proximo Spirits owned 1800 Tequila has run for nearly 30 years, pairing limited bottlings with commissioned artwork. Friedeberg, who first worked with the brand in 2017, died in March at his home in San Miguel de Allende at age 90, making Mono Laberinto Doble a posthumous collaboration.

What is in the decanter

According to The Spirits Business, the liquid inside each 700ml decanter is an extra añejo made from 100% Blue Weber agave, produced at the brand's family owned distillery in the town of Tequila and double distilled in copper pot stills. The spirit is aged for a minimum of three years in new American oak casks and finished in French oak casks that previously held Amarone, an Italian dry red wine. It is bottled at 40% ABV, with tasting notes the brand describes as oak, cooked agave, honey, prune and subtle vanilla.

Each decanter is signed, numbered and comes with an official art certificate. The pyramid shaped nickel vessel was designed as a nod to Mexico's Mayan pyramids, a recurring motif for the 1800 brand, whose standard bottle shape has referenced the same imagery for years.

Friedeberg and the Colección series

Friedeberg's relationship with 1800 began in 2017, when he served as the inaugural artist for the brand's Milenio Artist Series in Mexico, according to The Spirits Business. Best known internationally for his 1962 Hand Chair and for decades of ornate, architecturally inflected surrealist work, Friedeberg trained as an architect in Mexico City before turning to art under the influence of Mathias Goeritz, and was later invited into the Surrealist circle by André Breton.

The Colección series itself dates back to bottlings called Circo and Naturaleza in 1998 and Solo Luz in 2000 and Los Ojos in 2001, according to The Spirits Business, followed over the years by decanters from artist Hector Valazquez Ortus in 2010, Bosco Sodi in 2012, Gary Baseman in 2015 and Leonora Carrington in 2022. Patrick Charpenel, executive director of El Museo del Barrio in New York, said in the brand's release that Friedeberg's work has always existed at the intersection of imagination, identity and heritage, calling the new decanter a tribute to the artist's legacy.

1800's push into ultra premium tequila

1800 traces its name to the year the Beckmann family says tequila was first aged in oak, and the brand launched in the late 1960s as an añejo expression under the name Cuervo 1800 Tequila. The Beckmann family also controls Jose Cuervo, the world's top selling tequila brand, along with Maestro Dobel and other spirits brought to market through their Proximo Spirits arm, based in Jersey City, New Jersey. The company describes 1800 as the world's most awarded tequila family and says it is crafted from 100% Blue Weber agave grown in Jalisco.

The launch coincides with the release of a book titled The Art of Tequila: Spirit of Mexico, published by Assouline and sold alongside the decanter, extending 1800's recent pattern of pairing high end releases with cultural programming. The brand's core lineup remains blanco, reposado and cristalino tequilas alongside flavored expressions, with the Colección series and other limited añejo projects, such as last year's Triple Cask Añejo travel retail rollout, occupying the top of its price ladder.

What this means

An $11,000 tequila is priced almost entirely for the decanter and the provenance attached to Friedeberg's name, not for anything unusual in the liquid itself, which uses aging techniques already found in 1800's lower priced añejo lines. Purity status for the Colección Tequila inside Mono Laberinto Doble is not yet documented in independent testing, so it carries no verified purity rating in Tequila Watch's database at this time.