I’m talking, of course, about the Champagne Machinegun.
Maybe watch the demo video below on silent if you
don’t like EDM.
The gun is made by a French nightclub-product company called
Extra-Night, and distributed stateside by a gentleman in Miami named Jeremy
Touitou. Mr. Touitou had built his empire on sparklers used to present bottles
in clubs, so it would make sense that he remains on the bleeding edge of novel
applications for sparkling wine in clubs.
I’m extremely pleased that someone has thought critically
about a way to get people excited about spraying sparkling wine onto others. Methode
Champenois sparkling wine is exciting even before being opened- no beverage on
the planet is more dangerously carbonated at six atmospheres of pressure. This miracle of
chemistry allows us the joyous spectacle of saberage. But that’s old news now-
this is the next evolution of gregarious, attention-seeking champagne usage-
delivering it across the room to a stranger’s face, potentially without their
consent.
I have not personally held or tested this champagne
machinegun, but based on pictures and video, combined with a little bit of
weapon and sparkling wine knowledge, I’m prepared to discuss the pros and cons
of this device.
The CMG does allow one to spray sparkling wine with more
accuracy and stability than just holding your thumb over the bottle. It does
this by introducing a rear and forward grip to the bottle with a chassis that
resembles a tommy gun. It further improves on the thumb-on-the-bottle method by
giving the champagne a narrow channel to flow through, regulating the rate of
flow to a speed that empties a magnum in about 45 to 60 seconds. The CMG
currently only fits magnums. This product was conceived to encourage sales of
large format sparkling wine in clubs. I have every reason to believe it will
succeed, because it is completely crazy, and people with money love crazy bullshit like this.
Since it is the first gun on the market that shoots
champagne, we can say by a lack of competition that is it the best. However
there is a lot of room for improvement and for the sake of progress, we should
discuss the CMG’s shortcomings openly:
-It is full-auto only. Because this isn’t an actual gun with
moving parts, it’s just a more stable way to hold a magnum while you shake it
up to force wine out. Rocking the gun back and forth causes it to begin “firing”-
this is an extremely imprecise method of firing. Full auto is only helpful if
you intend to engage a large grouping of targets, or intend to engage one
target heavily. Perhaps this is easy to accept if you’re firing a magnum of
inexpensive cava, but let’s assume you’re rolling into the baby shower packing
a mag of something more precious like Pierre Peters “Les Chetillons”, you’ll
want to choose your targets more judiciously instead of spray and pray.
Multiple firing modes like semiautomatic, and burst fire should be added if you
wish to encourage truly high-end champagne shoot-outs.
-Its flashy appearance is not in tune with what the
gun-loving public likes. I can understand the logic in selecting a tommy gun as
the design for the CMG- it’s a classic American gangster weapon, associated
with kingpins and ruthless crime bosses. However aside from the errant shiny
gun in a rap video, the public wants modern, tactical looking guns, AKA Black
Rifles. Sure, making it in various shiny colors makes sense in a club setting,
but if they really want to see this weapon proliferated, they need to make it
look like something you would plausibly see in a recent release of Call of
Duty.
-It has no ability to accommodate accessories or
modifications. A major oversight of the CMG is its lack of weapon attachment
rails. These are essential for adding cool-looking and maybe practical devices
like scopes, flashlights, lasers, even under-barrel grenade launchers (in case
you have to blow up a car to squirt champagne on someone behind it).
-The price is $459. Just to put this price in context, you
can get many different real guns for less than this. I don’t think I’m asking
for too much for this to cost less than real guns. Right?
-Lastly, the gun does nothing to increase the effective
range of champagne exiting a bottle. As mentioned before it is merely a
glamorous holster for you to shake a bottle inside of. It is very unsatisfying
that the firer does not get to actually pull a trigger.
I am not listing these faults in an attempt to discredit or
undermine the Champagne Machinegun, Mr. Touitou, or Extra-Night. On the
contrary, I am interested in pushing this idea forward, and creating a mass
proliferation of champagne weapons. Here are a few additional suggestions for
how to improve on this very good, albeit super crazy idea:
-Create a more powerful version that enhances the range of
the gun by diverting sparkling wine into a secondary pressurized chamber.
Making the wine come out of the actual gun barrel would be nice. Also, a
semiautomatic fire mode would be a huge step up in conserving ammunition.
-Create a larger version that can accommodate various sizes
of sparkling wine bottles up to as large as a Nebuchadnezzar (16 Liters).
Obviously this will be prohibitively heavy to carry, so it will need to be
mounted to a vehicle. A stretch hummer should do nicely.
-Create a smaller version that can shoot an entire bottle of
champagne in 1 second. Sounds crazy right? It already exists. In the late 90’s
Super Soaker released the CPS 2000, a water gun that could fire up to a liter
of water in 1 second. All you have to do is buy one off ebay and reverse
engineer it.
The bottom version is the original, which was recalled for
being too powerful. It was awesome.
Do not waste our time by suggesting these requests are too
complicated. Lockheed Martin just announced it is ready to deploy *laser
weapons* into battle with US armed forces, so don’t tell me a better champagne
machine gun is impossible.
There is a war going on out there, and we need all the help
we can get in the fight against sobriety and boredom. Get to work.
If you need further help testing this gun, please feel free
to send a sample to:
Public Services Bar
202 Travis St. Suite 100
Houston TX, 77002
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