Talking Vodka Bottle Hits Russia

March 19 -- It's for the drinker who has everything. A Russian engineer has invented a talking vodka bottle.

When you open the bottle, the cap starts talking. It starts with practical instructions like "Pour," then, as the evening progresses, it produces an increasingly drunken mixture of shrieks, giggles and sound effects.

"It starts out with one persona — the electronic vodka genie," inventor Dmitri Zhurin told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. "As the drinking progresses, he is joined by women, who start to laugh and shriek."

The talking bottle cap looks just like a regular one. But packed inside are batteries, a timer and a voice-synthesis chip. Zhurin received more than 10 patents on the design.

Every time you open the bottle for another round, the cap goes to a new level of festivity. The batteries last several hours, well past the average life of a one-liter bottle of vodka when a group is gathered.

Zhurin says he came up with the idea when he was sitting around with colleagues one evening after work. "We weren't drinking," he says, "I just had a brainwave."

The talking bottle cap will cost $3-$8 when it hits stores, depending on the model.

Social Function

Zhurin's invention might seem gimmicky to foreign eyes, but it fulfills a number of functions crucial to Russian drinking habits.

First, it allows you to drink alone. "When you have no one to drink with, it will serve as your drinking companion," says Zhurin. Critics might call it an enabler: the bottle cap asks "How about another one?," then gives the order to pour without waiting for an answer.

Second, the bottle cap provides toasts when you're running dry. Russians don't like to drink without toasts. At a Russian party, guests always drink together. One guest says a toast, then everyone downs a shot of vodka and chases it with a soft drink and zakuski, snacks designed to soak up the vodka. (Purists follow their vodka with a deep sniff of Russian black bread.)

The toasts start out elaborately: "To the beauty of the women gathered here this evening, which outshines the natural splendors of the glade and dale," and on and on. They get more emotional and less coherent as the evening progresses. By the end of the night all people can manage is "Za nas." (For us.)