Elon Musk’s $250 Tesla Tequila started as an April Fool’s joke, now it’s sold out - CNBC

From joking about a Tesla bankruptcy to a Model S price cut complete with sex and drug references, Elon Musk has been known to get cheeky on Twitter from time to time.

But one of the billionaire tech CEO's Twitter jokes that started as an April Fool's Day prank about a Tesla-branded tequila actually came true this week — and, now the tequila is sold out.

Musk first tweeted about "Teslaquila" on April 1, 2018 as part of a series of April Fool's pranks that also included jokes that the electric car company was facing bankruptcy. In those tweets, Musk joked that he had been "found passed out against a Tesla Model 3, surrounded by 'Teslaquilla' bottles" and he included a photo of himself holding sign reading "bankwupt!"

In October 2018, Tesla officially filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the brand name "Teslaquila."

At the time, Musk tweeted that the tequila was "coming soon" and he offered a "visual approximation," in the form of a photo of a bottle of tequila featuring a label with Tesla branding.

Then, in July 2020, Musk again teased the imminent arrival of the onetime prank liquor with a tweet that said: "Coming soon, our battle with Big Tequila! It's real."

Earlier this week, Tesla started actually selling bottles of Tesla Tequila on the company's website for $250 per bottle. And as of Friday, a note on the website says the pricey tequila is already "temporarily out of stock."

Tesla has not yet revealed exactly how many bottles of the tequila the company has sold, or how many were produced overall. Tesla did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It request for comment.

Tesla's website describes the tequila as "an exclusive, small-batch premium 100% de agave tequila añejo made from sustainably sourced highland and lowland agaves." The company goes on to say the tequila, which was aged for 15 months in French oak barrels, has notes of fruit, vanilla, cinnamon and pepper.

The tequila also comes in a hand-blown glass bottle that resembles a lightning bolt and comes on a metal stand bearing the Tesla logo. Before it sold out, the tequila was available for shipping to U.S. states that allow the direct shipment of liquor. The website also notes that deliveries of the tequila, which is 40% alcohol by volume, are expected to begin in "late 2020" and that the $250 cost includes shipping.

With Tesla Tequila already sold out on the Tesla website, though, resellers have begun putting the bottles on sale for inflated prices on sites like eBay. On Friday afternoon, bottles of the tequila were being offered on the online marketplace with starting bids as high as $999 per bottle.

In the past, Musk and Tesla have had fun with other product sales, including a line of Tesla-branded, red satin shorts (aka "short shorts") meant to poke fun at Tesla stock short sellers (investors who bet on the company's stock to go down). Meanwhile, fans of Musk have also been known to shell out hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to resellers for branded products such as hats and flame-throwers sold by one of the billionaire's other companies, The Boring Company.

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