Culture

How to Open a Champagne Bottle With a Saber

HAPPY NEW YEAR
articles/2014/12/30/how-to-saber-a-champagne-bottle/141230-joiner-champagne-tease_zrhl4x
James Joiner/The Daily Beast

Want to impress the crowd at your New Year’s Eve celebration? Nothing does it quite like deftly decapitating a bottle of bubbly with a gleaming blade. Oh sure, it’s a little intimidating at first, but sabrage, or, for the layman (you know, just about all of us) the act of getting all Ned Stark on your champagne is a time-honored tradition with a relatively slim annual injury rate.

With an internal pressure of about 90psi just begging to get out, it’s not rocket science. In this video, sommelier Patrick Cappiello of New York’s wonderful Pearl & Ash restaurant shows us just how to pop the top.