Sorry, I only drink wine that was aged listening to the Nier Automata soundtrack now

Well, it’s been a long hard road, but since I vowed to only consume alcohol matured while having game soundtracks forcibly blasted into its molecules, giving up drinking has been a lot easier. Now, to take the final gulp of my Snake Eater-theme-reared IPA, and open up my web browser….

Oh. Welp. Party’s back on I suppose, because Japanese retailer Onkyo Direct are selling two varieties of official Nier: Automata wine, matured in barrels with speakers attached to them that exclusively pump out the character action games’ soundtrack. The two red wines - named 9S and 2B for Automata’s android heroes - were each force-fed different playlists selected from the game’s soundtrack. The wines retail at around $80 US a bottle, and each comes with an exclusive glass featuring a Lunar Tear design (that’s a thing from the video game, Nier: Automata.) I really don’t have too much else to add to this, aside from bringing its existence to your attention. However, upon learning of it, I am confident that you, too, will think: Yes, that is definitely a thing someone has done then put up for sale.

When I showed this to Edders, he immediately compared it to those cows they play classical music at to yield more milk, although I’m left both unsure and intrigued to exactly what effect the Automata music would have on wine. Naysayers among you will have already dismissed the whole thing as a marketing stunt, but I do believe the Nier soundtrack has some deep magic to it. For example, it’s very effective at making you treat incredibly hokey and surface-level allusions to undergrad philosophy as if they’re mind-shattering layers of subtext. I mock because I love - Automata is a beautiful piece of work and Yoko Taro is the only person allowed to call a big robot ‘Engels’ like it means something in my presence.

For those still clamouring for further adventures in the Taro-verse, Nier producer Yosuke Saito recently teased that the team may be working on more Nier. “I’ve been talking about wanting to do something with Yoko and Okabe for some time now,” said Saito. “I’ll have something a bit more put-together to say in the not-too-distant future, so please stay tuned. It might be NieR, it might not be NieR. (Laughs.) That’s about all I can say for now.” Cheers for the wine spot, BrandoSP.