While other companies continue to diminish their brands, by cutting back in ingredients, materials, design, packaging, marketing, and creative—Martell continues to ascend in brand experience in part due to engaging top artists and design architects in brand packaging and more. The ingredients? Some of the blend’s brandies date from 1871. The competition? Remy Martin’s Louis XIII and Richard Hennessy.

Design Firm, Dragon Rouge drew its inspiration from a golden age in which exceptional know-how is wedded with ornamental elegance "to give visible expression to perfect harmony". Designers drew inspiration from imagining a bottle fashioned from pure crystal in which the precious liquid is concentrated in a single droplet suspended from an arch—which is decorated by “Martell” arabesques in gold. The bottle itself is the fruition of collaboration with the Cristallerie de Sèvres glassworks.

The stopper bears the Martell monogram with elegant flourish, and complements the ensemble with a semi-circular winged shape—communicating balance in the decanter's "voluptuous curves", as well as the cognac's balanced and sophisticated palate.

The result? Well, in China, the $3600 L'OR (French for "Gold") Cognac quickly sold out as soon as it hit the stores. Martell L'Or de Jean Martell will be available in the United States in very limited quantity (120 bottles) beginning in April 2009.