How to behead a bottle of champagne

During our visit to Paris, we visited Paul's relatives, Aldo and Denise and had a lovely meal at their house. Our friend, Bronte, was invited to open the champagne, french style. One of Aldo's dinner party favourites is sabering, a dramatic way of uncorking a bottle of champagne. During Napoleon’s early-1800s heyday, the Hussars (French cavalry) celebrated victory with sabrage, the art of beheading a Champagne bottle with a saber. Rumors abound that the tradition began with the grand widow of bubbly, Madame Clicquot, who gave handsome mounted officers bottles of Veuve Clicquot. Inspired by thirst and the recent Reign of Terror, horseback soldiers drew sabers and decapitated their bottles like so many antirevolutionary traitors. The trick is to examine the bottle and find one of the two vertical seams running up the sides. The spot on the bottleneck where the seam meets the lower lip is the weak point, for which you’ll aim. When the bottle is struck perfectly, anticipate a breathless pause before the saber clang against glass gives way to a dramatic gush of fizz. Bronte struck the bottleneck perfectly and beheaded the champagne at his first attempt. Needless to say, I think he guzzled a few glasses of champagne after that, to recover from the nerves, stress and pressure he felt from having to open the champagne with a saber.