Sabering a bottle of Champagne adds drama to a toast

Excitement bubbles when the host opens a bottle of Champagne with a flourish
 

Champagne-wise, it's been a very good year for Dr. Robert Bakos.

Of course, he loves to savor those tiny bubbles. But the thrill really begins when he opens the bottle.

A task feared by many has become a kind of performance art for Bakos at dinner parties and other celebratory gatherings.

Demonstrating at WineSense last week, the neatly dressed retired Pittsford neurosurgeon grasps a machete-type knife. He stands up straight, one hand at the base of the bottle, the other holding the knife's blunt edge at about a 30-degree angle. Then in a swift, decisive yet not particularly forceful strike, he lops off the top of the bottle, and a chunky missile of glass lip, cork and wire cage arcs through the air. Left in his hand is a bottle with just a bit of foamy overflow and an angled, clean-cut spout.

"It's a hoot," says Bakos, who learned the centuries-old art of sabering Champagne, or opening the bottle with a sword or knife, at a restaurant near Vancouver, B.C., in June.

After Bakos ordered, the sommelier led him downstairs to the wine cellar and gave him a tutorial. Then Bakos sabered his own bottle and returned to the table to enjoy it with his wife on their 40th wedding anniversary.

Since then, his enthusiasm for sabrage has infected friend and neighbor Charles Foster. The technique has given the Xerox engineering management retiree a chance to make use of a 20-inch decorative machete from El Salvador given to him years ago. (Meanwhile, Bakos is breaking in a new Champagne sword he ordered online.)

"It's a fun way to open Champagne," Foster says.

Foster and Bakos are in the middle of a busy bout of sabering. Not only are they striking the tops off at private parties and gatherings, but they also led a sabering demonstration Saturday at WineSense and will be doing another at the Park Avenue wine boutique on Wednesday.

"People have been calling like crazy," says WineSense owner Kristin Vanden Brul, who had never seen a Champagne sabering before inviting Foster and Bakos to do so in her shop.

Legendary beginning

The origins of sabering are traced back two centuries to Napoleonic France, says Lou Insel, state manager for Kobrand, a company that imports Taittinger Champagnes. When victorious soldiers returned from battle riding their horses, appreciative townspeople would give them bottles of Champagne, which the soldiers would slash open with their sabers. Another legend has Champagne widow Madame Clicquot offering bottles to Napoleon's officers in exchange for land protection. The officers would similarly open and drink the Champagne while riding. Though horses are no longer a part of today's sabering, the practice is alive and well in France, where the Confrerie du Sabre d'Or inducts members into "the noble art of sabrage." Chapters exist in a dozen other countries, including the United States.

In Vancouver, B.C., sommelier Igal Amsallem recently launched the Sabrage Academy, a monthly wine education program.

"Sabrage is a good way to teach people about Champagnes and sparkling wines. ... It's very popular in France during the holidays or at special events or ceremonies. In Quebec, it is starting to become popular at charity or fundraising events. But I think it's a little too early to say it's a trend," notes the multilingual Versailles native and former Quebec resident.

While sabering French Champagne is traditional, most bottles of sparkling wine can be sabered, says Sherwood Deutsch, vice president of fine wines at Century Pittsford Wines in Pittsford.

Still, experts (including Deutsch) put sabering in the "don't try this at home" category.

"It requires practice, a good bottle and cojones," says Insel, who arranged for a Taittinger rep from France to perform several demonstrations this fall in the Rochester area, including a Champagne dinner at Max of Eastman Place and a store demo at Lisa's Liquor Barn in Penfield. The Max dinner included another European tradition: smashing the Champagne glasses against the wall after drinking.

"Once you commit to sabering, you do it. It's like hitting a drive in golf; you don't stop at the ball, you drive through the ball," says Rich Piccolo, a fine wine merchant for Empire Merchants North.

Conditions just right

Those who do dare to saber also know the following:

The bottle must be thoroughly chilled (or frappé, as the French like to say), which decreases the pressure inside the bottle and will help prevent the cork from popping on its own or the bottle from exploding. Bakos and Foster put it in the refrigerator for several hours, then in the freezer for 10 minutes before opening.

The foil must be removed and the wire basket (muselet) loosened and lifted above the glass lip (annulus) at the top of the bottle.

The saber or knife must run up one of the two seams that stretch vertically on each side of the bottle, which acts as a kind of fault line. Where the knife strikes the lip is the weakest joint in the bottle. The pressure from inside the bottle does the lion's share of work, and the lip, cage and cork should cleanly separate. The pressure also ensures that no glass shards get inside the wine, making it safe to drink, adds Deutsch.

Even under the best of circumstances, there are times when the bottle shatters or the cork pops before the blade hits the lip, says Piccolo.

Though Bakos has not had that happen to him yet, he can attest to another sabrage-related risk.

"There is something addictive about it. Yes, I am drinking more Champagne."