Knowing Is Half the Battle: How to Saber a Champagne Bottle

Most of world history has been determined by men holding booze and swords.  Something about this pairing really fires one’s lust for life: when you’re holding booze in one hand and a sword in the other hand, things seem to fall into place for you.  It’s a combination that just makes sense, like wine and cheese.  Or wine and swords.  Here’s a description and video of a neat party trick you can try next time you’re holding booze and a sword.  “Sabering” – no, it’s not some kind of San Francisco dance move, but rather, a cool, potentially unsafe way to pop a champagne bottle with a sword or knife. 

Here’s how it’s done:

1) Chill the champagne.  This has to be done with chilled champagne.  Wine bottles do not have the necessary amount of pressure in them to pull this trick off.

2) Loosen the cage from the cork and then tighten it again around a higher lip of the bottle.  When you slide the knife up the bottle, it is going to strike the bottom lip.  Obviously, make sure no one is in the path of the flying cork.

3) Find the seam of the bottle – it’s the ridge that runs from the top to the bottom, where the glass is fused.

4) Hold the bottle in one hand, with your thumb in the dimple at the bottom, and take a kitchen knife (I’m talking chef’s knife, not butter knife) in the other, preferably one with a thick dull side.

5) Slide the dull side of the knife up the seam of the bottle quickly.  It will hit the lip and pop the cork with extreme style.  Models will immediately be all over you.

Here are two videos: one shows how to do this correctly, and the other shows how to break the bottle and spray glass everywhere.  Be careful out there.