Did you know? - The Art of Champagne Sabrage!

Sabrage is a technique for opening a champagne bottle with a sabre, used for ceremonial occasions. The saber is slid along the body of the bottle toward the neck. The force of the blade hitting the lip breaks the glass to separate the collar from the neck of the bottle. The cork and collar remain together after separating from the neck

There are several legends of the story of Sabrage or Sabering Champagne. One says that when the officers of Napoleon’s army returned home after a victory, cheering townspeople would hand bottles of Champagne as tokens of their appreciation for their victory and gallantry. Since the soldiers were mounted on horseback it was
difficult to hold the reins of the horse and remove both the foil, wire basket (muselet) around the cork and the cork (bouchon) at the same time, so the soldiers simply took out their sabers and struck it against the lip of the bottle with an upward blow and sabered off the cork. Voilà!

Here's a step by step illustration of how its done -

1. A chilled bottle of champagne (45-48°F or 7-8°C) is taken and the the foil on top of the bottle is removed to reveal the cork and wire basket





2. The wire basket around the cork is carefully removed.






3. The bottle is held firmly, neck pointing up about 30 degrees




4. Now, the sabre is held against the seam of the bottle and firmly slid up against the glass ring at the top.



5. The cork and glass ring fly away dramatically


When performed correctly, the cork and glass ring will fly away, spilling little of the precious wine and leaves a neat cut on the neck of the bottle

Go try! Caution: Careful though as we do not want any accidents around or any shards of glass in the champagne!