Champagne Sabrage at Wine Access

Posted July 27th, 2010 09:07 by The Editors

We’ve started a bit of a Friday tradition, here at Wine Access HQ, of doing something fun and wine-related to wrap up the week. This week, we learned how to sabre Champagne/sparkling wine, the fine art of sabrage.

If you’re a wine aficionado, you probably know what sabrage is and you may even know how to do it. For those of you who are new to wine, sabrage is when you use a sabre or knife to cut the top off of a bottle of sparkling wine, separating the collar from the neck of the bottle.

Why do it? Well, it’s fun and a great party trick. We took advantage of a rare, sunny and warm day in Calgary, to hang out in the parking lot and sabre some sparkling wine. (Never, ever sabre Champagne inside.)

In order to prepare for our sabrage lesson, we chilled some sparkling wine in the fridge and then for an hour in the freezer. The wine has to be very cold in order for it to work. In total, we had 6 bottles of wine to play with and we made good use of all of them.

Our weapon of choice was a prop sword that Tom got to take home from last year’s Playhouse Wine Festival. (Tom explains how we got the sabre, it involves an attempt to break a Guinness World Record.)

So how do you sabre a bottle of sparkling wine or Champagne? We made a video with Tom to explain.

Although we all learned to do it, the best reaction of the day was from our Editorial Assistant. She was a natural at sabrage and clearly had a lot of fun learning how to do it. We made a video of Tom teaching Claire how to sabre sparkling wine.

We wrapped up our lesson with a little demonstration for the sales team. They were very impressed.