Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/04/impressive-champagne-saber-fai.html
…
Terrible technique.
Having someone else hold the bottle was his first mistake- it means he’s holding the blade all wrong. You’re supposed to slide along the bottle in a single sweeping motion, and the force of impact with the lip of glass at the top will cause a clean break, and take the cork cleanly off. And hacking at it like that once he’s failed once is never going to work.
16 Likes
What’s wrong with holding the bottle upright and carefully working out the cork, for a release of gas without a wasteful fountain spray?
16 Likes
29 Likes
The act of a man who doesn’t understand how bottles work. Or swords.
8 Likes
two points…
- I feel that Thomas Keller was not there at the time and was not pleased when he found out this happened.
- The fool had it right, and for some reason gave up doing it right and ofc the results were predictable.
Seriously…like others have said…just open it normally. This is not fancy and not cool and seriously just stupid.
8 Likes
Well, on the one hand, Yountville, California’s legendary French Laundry restaurant just got a hell of a signal boost.
And it only just occurred to me that champagne vendors are going to end up selling a lot more champagne if a significant fraction of bottles end up getting shattered by bad sabering.
3 Likes
Apparently, if you make champagne (small ‘c’ for the generic stuff) the technique these days it=is to stick on a crown cork like on a beer bottle while it ferments. You then have to take off the crown cork with the bottle upside down, get out the sediment, inject some grape juice and sugar if it has been a bad year, and some carbon dioxide, then re-seal it with a proper cork.
You could have champagne with a crown cork. Even the bottles are the right shape to take it. But, nooo…
If I can’t haphazardly waste insanely expensive sh!t, what’s the point of my being so criminally wealthy?
Now excuse me while I slowly drive my Lamborghini down the I-5 during rush hour.
9 Likes
How can you be the general manager of a highly-rated restaurant and not know what Youtube is for?
Also, @mocon, a restaurant manager is probably not criminally wealthy.
2 Likes
For flawless results, every time.
As for me, I have a very demanding sweet tooth, so I’ll stick to unscrewing the cap of my Martini & Rossi Asti.
11 Likes
The “I” in my statement was meant to be a self-referencing illusory “I” opening a bottle per RickMycroft’s instructions, not the hardworking gentleman in the video.
1 Like
If you look closely, you can see that his first attempt was actually successful at breaking the glass near the cork. The glass was just too strong to break all around and remove the cork.
I’d bet all they really needed to do was rotate the bottle and try again, instead of swinging wildly at it like a madman.
7 Likes
9 Likes
In my day, I wasted at least that much on Capri Sun due to bad straw technique.
10 Likes
No Champagne? No problem, let them eat cake.
1 Like
Thank goodness nothing of value was lost.
1 Like
Billecart-Salmon is fucking delicious.
Waster should have practiced on some cheap bubbles first, and frankly never should have attempted to saber a 15L bottle. The glass is much thicker and that “saber” is a fucking short-sword.
8 Likes
Properly made, methode traditional, fermentation rather than carbonation is indeed done with a crown cap and a system of gradually moving the bottles on v shaped frames so that the sediment deposits at the cap end (remuage) . They then are passed upside down into a refridgerent bath until the gunk freezes and it’s pulled out with the beer top.
The liquor d’ive forgotten is then added to make up the volume. Champagne brut is really dry, and don’t forget that champagne is at the northern end of viable commercial winemaking in France (see climate change) so chaptelisation would have been earlier. Sugar is added to make it demi sec or sec really. Not because of the harvests at that stage.
4 Likes
