Have no idea what people think when they go for stunts, especially with heavy glass bottles used for Champagne. Artery cut by another sabering attempt, resulting in coma:
I didn’t see any reference to sabering in the linked article. Was that reported elsewhere? Given the difficulty we had on New Year’s Eve removing the cork from a 3L Laurent-Perrier, I can imagine putting it between your legs for more leverage with a large format with a difficult cork and this story is a reminder why that would be a bad idea.
Opening champagne while intoxicated is definitely not safe. Palming the cork with a towel is probably the safest possible approach, I guess.
Drinking and Darwin. They both start with capital “D” for a reason.
There’s no report that he was trying to sabre it. Seems that he was holding it between his legs simply to open it.
Yeah, this is one of those times where you need to invest the entire 30 seconds to read the article. Seems like he was just trying to open the bottle. There was no “stunt”.
In this day and age I’m surprised it wasn’t captured on video and posted on YouTube.
OK, I give up, how did the bottle “explode” then?
I’ve had bottles of still wine break due to a slight bump against something hard. Bottles sometimes have hidden weaknesses.
One thing that would really be insane is sabering a bottle while holding it between your legs.
I’m not sure how you could saber it while it’s between you legs unless you were standing and then that would just be too weird anyway. As far as the bottle breaking, it’s not common but it’s not entirely unheard of for a bottle of sparkling wine to explode during handling, or sometimes not even while it’s being handled. It’s usually due to a minor flaw in the glass.
Yeah, I’ve had a bottle of dom just detonate after falling 1" from the bottom shelf of a wine cabinet to a hardwood floor… 
Got it. Bump/Fall/something hard/ hardwood floor.
Human legs. Reading is hard.
THAT made my day!
Just reading the article: “Less common is a bottle itself actually shattering, which is usually due to a fault with the glass.”
back when I let restaurant “somms” open my wine, I had one such expert place the bottle between his thighs so he could use both hands to extract the cork. Classy move.
Broke a bottle of costly Tesseron cognacs when I set it down a touch too hard on my cellar counter. Bottom of bottle fell off. Cellar smelled great for weeks.
Yeah, I once went to the ER from a faulty glass bottle of Domaine du Pouy. I was using an ah-so, and the neck of the bottle split lengthwise. Would have been much better if the neck had just snapped off. The remaining half of the neck had a very sharp edge, which cut into the palm of my hand (think about how your twisting the bottle + opener in a difficult ah-so extraction). The cut left a big flap of open skin, required some number of stiches to close.
I’ve since tried to find other ways to be the life of the party.
Gotta watch out for crotchety champagne bottles . . .
Yowza!
I am picturing that old SNL sketch with Dan Akroyd as Julia Child.
We’re still talking CHAMPAGNE GLASS, right? Or is it slow days and using “bottle fell”, “bottle dropped”, “bottle knocked” and any other BOTTLE IMPACT references now constitutes “bottle shattered on its own”? And none actually referencing CHAMPAGNE bottles.
Urban myth. By a writer most likely with poor education in wine matters, if any, a bottle just simply shattering on its own without being touched?. Just bad Google search. So, first off, CHAMPAGNE bottle, THICKER glass to begin with, for a reason. Shattering on ITS OWN is pretty much non occurence, maybe, a big maybe that is, in days of old when glass quality was not up to today’s standards, and still, definitely not without an impact first against something. Perhaps, and more likely, born out of insurance claims and/or not wanting to be seen as the Darwin Awards winner in the above link. So, yes, again, Champagne glass shatter could happen upon IMPACT, no argument from me as long as “impact” is part of a story. Human thigh muscles, even those of best athletes’, will not create such an impact.
Have no idea how else to explain this any better. IMPACT is required, impact with something hard. But, sure, if you guys are convinced that human leg strength can shatter a bottle of Champagne, then let’s go with that.