I’m just going to be upfront about this: I bought this wine because I’m a sucker for a gimmick. The store had a couple of bottles sitting upright on one of the shelves, and it caught my eye because the cork looked like it was all made of white wax, or something similar. And when I investigated more closely, I was even more interested, because this stuff was shiny.

Because this wine? Has gold flakes in it.

I did a whole two laps and a half around the store (which is what I do when I’m thinking about whether or not I should buy something that’s a little silly and a little out of the range that I wanted to spend) before I came back to get this one. This’ll probably be the last white I buy for a while, since finally, finally temperatures are starting to drop, and I will be able to drink red wine again without wanting to suicide. I decided to whip out the credit card and be stupid to get a stupid-looking, shinyshiny wine.

The wine is a mix of Gewürztraminer, Viognier, and Chardonnay. Two of those three grapes I just love, and I could basically never drink another goddamned Chardonnay in my life and be happy (although I suppose that would be a good goal for me: to find chardonnays that don’t just make me roll my eyes), so I had a feeling the wine might have something beyond its shiny gimmick. My expectations were low, since, well, the bottle was full of gold, but after I let my roommate take a bunch of pictures of the shimmery bottle, I cracked it open and ended up quite pleased.

I initially overchilled this (stuck it in the freezer and then got distracted wrestling my kitchen window open and peeling two heads of garlic), so my first impressions were ‘ah, it’s cold! And it’s white wine!’ But as it returned to a more reasonable temperature, I got some nice scents and flavors. This had a very good aroma; something between pears and peaches, and a little bit of honey. The gold flakes had the benefit of getting me to swirl it a lot to keep them from settling at the bottom, so I kept getting waves of the bouquet. On the tongue, this wine was very acidic–mouth-puckeringly so–but not citrusy at all. Each sip of it just made me want to drink more… despite the acidity, it had a taste of very wet fruits–pear, peach, melon. I really quite enjoyed it. It went well with the massively garlic and chorizo heavy soup I made for dinner tonight.

This wine, while ridiculous, was fun, and almost good enough to justify the price. At the end of the day, though, I’m just wondering if drinking this whole bottle tonight is going to leave me shitting sparkles.

BUY IT AGAIN?: Depends on whether or not I shit sparkles. IS THAT A GOOD THING OR A BAD THING? YOU MAKE THE CALL.