Hey dudes, looking for something special to get your ladyfriend for Valentine’s Day? Maybe a box of chocolates, a nice bottle of red wine? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could kill two birds with one stone? Then ChocoVine is the gift for you! Especially if you want your girlfriend to break up with you after she’s done vomiting. (Protip: hold her hair back like a gentleman.)

Maybe that’s not fair. Maybe ChocoVine will actually get you laid. We’ll just have to wait and see.

When something makes me do a literal double-take at the grocery store, I know that I must own it and probably write about it. Usually this fills me with dread and excitement, two emotions that really shouldn’t go together. Such was the case with ChocoVine. It was seated at the end of the wine aisle in a small display setup. When you see something that looks like Yoo-Hoo in a wine bottle, it’s impossible not to investigate further. And that I did.

The front of the bottle reads “The taste of dutch chocolate and fine red wine”. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The back of the bottle has some interesting tidbits, also. First of all, it is encouraged that you shake it well, which is something I never thought I’d read on a wine bottle. Actually, I was surprised at how little chocolate sediment settled at the bottom of the bottle. The chocolate looks pretty evenly distributed. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign.

It also advises, “Do not mix with acidic drinks!” Uh, isn’t red wine already acidic? I don’t understand!

When you go to ChocoVine’s website, the first thing you see is a black page with the words “You have to be 21 year [sic] old!” We’re off to a fine start.

There’s so much to quote from their website, so I’ll just let you read it for yourself. Here’s some choice quotes, in case you’re lazy:

“[Chocolate and wine] are also both incredibly complex and pairing them has always been a daunting process, often leading to dreadful results.”

I bet.

“The right chocolate paired with the perfect wine can create a near-orgasmic taste experience.”

I’ve had what I guess you could call near-orgasmic taste experiences before, but for $11.99 , I’m betting they didn’t exactly use the “perfect wine” and my vagina will not tingle with culinary pleasure.

“But the wrong wine opposite a too-sweet chocolate creates nothing but horror. Many have taken the challenge…and have failed.”

It’s like they’re setting me up. I don’t even need a punchline.

I have to be honest though, minus the typo on their website, there’s some other stuff on there that’s reaaaally trying to make me believe ChocoVine actually tastes good. It apparently won a gold medal from the Beverage Tasting Institute. I could take two seconds to see if this is actually a legit thing, but eh. There’s also a clip from some show on the Lifetime channel that almost made me die of boredom. The host acted like she was being paid to pretend to enjoy it, but she didn’t vomit and she kept a straight and cheery face as she drank it, so it can’t be that awful. Right? I mean, you can only suppress your gag reflex so much…right?

Okay ChocoVine, your website has done its job. I no longer expect to puke after my first sip of chocolate wine. Maybe my second, but probably not my first.

I feel I should insert a caveat here: I’m neither a chocolate snob nor a wine snob, so I’m not going to be talking about bouquets and woodsy vs. fruity and all that shit. I’m just a regular uneducated asshole and I will try to describe it to the best of my ability as a normal shlub.

First off, the smell. Scent? What do wine snobs call that? Whatever. Anyway, it smelled a lot like how it looks: Yoo-Hoo, except with an underlying tone of alcohol. It was a little disconcerting, because the smell of chocolate dominated about 80%, but then there was this alcohol finish that I would have expected to make me feel repulsed, like it had gone bad, but somehow the alcohol smell worked with the chocolate. It’s thicker than Yoo-Hoo or wine; it’s about the consistency of milk. It felt kind of weird, drinking such a thick liquid out of a wine glass.

I kind of hate to say it, but ChocoVine tastes…well, it tastes pretty good, actually. As with the smell, the chocolate dominated the flavor. I hate to keep using this analogy, but it really tasted similar to Yoo-Hoo, while having the consistency of chocolate milk. ChocoVine claims that it has the taste of dutch chocolate, but it tasted more like a chocolate analogue. Which is not unpleasant, but it lacked the depth of flavor of true chocolate. That said, it is rather rich, which is a good thing and a bad thing. I have a low tolerance for sweets, so I don’t think I could down more than what was in the glass pictured above before reaching my sweetness tolerance level.

As for the wine…again, I’m no wine connoisseur, but if I didn’t know it was red wine in there, I would have guessed it was a chocolate drink mixed with a little vodka. The booze flavor hit on the back end, but there was nothing wine-like about it. It just tasted like alcohol. Again, I would have expected that to be repulsive, but I enjoyed it. In reality, the mixing of chocolate and booze is not unusual at all. Since the explosion of flavor-infused vodkas (which I think has grown out of control), brands like Three Olives even make chocolate-infused vodkas. I’ve never had Three Olives Chocolate Vodka, but I’d imagine it tastes a lot like ChocoVine, except less viscous.

Okay, you got me, ChocoVine. You taste pretty damn good. I wouldn’t choose ChocoVine as an accompaniment to a meal, but it would make a nice dessert cocktail. I tend to prefer my liquors straight, but if you’re into chocolate and getting drunk, ChocoVine would be a fine choice. I would recommend serving it to your ladyfriend after a nice cozy dinner on Valentine’s Day. Ladies love chocolate, so serve her enough of it and you may just get lucky. I can almost guarantee she won’t puke – at least, not until the next morning.

• Score: 3.5 out of 5 hair-holding gentlemen
• Price: $11.99 (on sale; regularly $12.99)
• Size: 750 ml
• Purchased at: Albertson’s #980
• Nutritional Quirks: “Ingredients: grape wine with artificial flavor, cream and artificial colors.”  Grape wine, that’s all you have to say? Also, the lack of chocolate in the ingredients is telling.  By the way, ChocoVine is 14% ABV.