Granted, not directly related to wine, but still, this is a funny story out of Japan about combining diamonds with alcohol to make a "luxe" beverage - too weird to say the least. Why not just go for some nice champagne, though?

From Please don't chug this gem of a drink:

Two decades after the country's "bubble economy", when the ostentatiously wealthy sprinkled gold on their food and drank pink Dom Perignon champagne by the magnum, the glass is filling again in Japan with a cocktail on rare ice.

The "diamond-tini", an adult beverage with a hint of lime and chilled belvedere vodka over a 1.06-carat stone, is topping the Ritz-Carlton beverage menu at a cool 1.8 million yen, or about $15,000.

That's certainly an incentive not to binge drink.

That hefty price includes drink preparations tableside, a serenade of "Diamonds are Forever" as a cut stone slides to the martini glass bottom, and later a ring mounting by a local jeweler.

"It's a timeless drink and diamonds are a girl's best friend, so you combine both this time of year in Japan when [marriage] proposals are rampant," says hotel manager Bernard Viola.