A Record Breaks and Much Champagne is Enjoyed at the 10th Anniversary Party of Whistler's Bearfoot Bistro

"My only regret in life is that I did not drink more champagne."
-John Maynard Keynes, American writer (1883-1946)

Without ceremony the digital clock set for one bright red minute starts counting down. Andre Saint-Jacques lifts a long, shiny sabre and strikes a magnum of 1998 Dom Perignon with the dull side of the sword, beheading the green bottle. A shock of champagne bursts and glass crashes to the floor behind the bar as Saint-Jacques moves on to the next. In the candlelit restaurant on a snowy night in Whistler, British Columbia, an intimate hush of people watch as more than twenty champagne magnums sit on the bar and await their fate.

Saint-Jacques brings the sabre to the side of his head and lowers it precisely to the air-filled space at the base of the bottleneck and follows through with momentum. His focus clear, he whacks another bottle. This one resists. Striking again, he finds the right spot on the bottle's seam and the top explodes away. As he works through the lineup he finds his rhythm and his face changes. The gleam in his blue eyes turns wild, the boyish grin grows.

"Andre! Andre! Andre!" chants the crowd. With the last seconds on the timer, everything intensifies. Saint-Jacques' movements sharpen and quicken, glass crashes louder. Champagne sprays, bubbling onto the bar, spraying like that's exactly what it's been waiting to do since 1998 and thank God this moment has come.

The clock reaches zero - time's up. Four bottles remain unopened.

"Hoorah!" cheers the well-dressed group. Strong hands of large men pat the smallish Saint-Jacques on the back. He glows.

"What just happened?" someone quietly asks a waiter.

"He broke the record of sabering open champagne magnums. Just did 21 in one minute. The record was 20," replies the waiter.

"Who held the record?"

"Some guy in Idaho," says the waiter moving on with his tray of caviar puffs.

Sabrage originated in France. Some say it began as a solution for opening bottles with stubborn corks. Some believe it started when soldiers in the French Army had no other means for opening champagne than the sabers they used as weapons. Today, this old way of opening champagne lives as a showy ritual.

The technique requires good aim. Striking the glass in just the right spot, using the space between the liquid and cork, and finding the weakness on the French bottle's seam mean the difference between success and failure. Cutting with the sword doesn't open the bottle. Instead, the dull side of the blade promotes the pressure inside to force the top off. The motion is a slide with follow through. When done cleanly, glass doesn't go in the champagne as pressure from inside the bottle blows all parts away from it.

And so, in that cozy room on a cold Canadian night the champagne does not go to waste. As restaurant guests mingle with beautiful young women wearing only paint airbrushed on their skin to look like dresses of black lace, servers pour the bubbly wine from the large, jagged-mouthed bottles. That's just the beginning.

Andre Saint-Jacques, founder of the Bearfoot Bistro knows how to entertain, celebrate and indulge. The restaurant's ten-year anniversary party features a celebratory dinner of seven-courses served with vintages of Dom Perignon dating back to 1966. The night is about champagne.

Jean Berchon, from the House of Moet & Chandon, charms guests with the story of how Dom Perignon accidentally invented champagne, a quote from Mark Twain - "Too much of anything is bad, but too much champagne is just right" - and brief comments about each vintage. "I will not speak to bore you," he says.

Later, away from the crowd, the distinguished Frenchman reveals, "I am not a good speaker. I am too shy." But he is mistaken. When Berchon speaks, his passion for the topic shows. "Champagne is about love, it is about seduction, about magic. It is not serious. The only serious thing about champagne is how we make it," he says.