How To Drink Like A Londoner

Saber your own Champagne bottle, craft your own gin and shake your own martini in this great imbibing city

- Jake Emen

Stepping out from your black cab, you arrive at The Milestone Hotel, a posh property at the southwestern edge of Hyde Park, and check into one of its staggering two-level master suites. Inside, a loaded DIY gin-and-tonic station has been prepared for your arrival, and you go ahead and customise a quick welcome refreshment. Then you clean up and don your finest blazer before heading for a sabrage demo — that is, how to be a total badass and slice off the cork of your Champagne bottle with a sword. Welcome to London.

Sign up for the Milestone’s The Art of Sabrage experience and you can pick which bottle of bubbles you’d like — though Champagne works best because of the thickness of the bottle — and either let one of the pros handle the job for you or take matters into your own hands. You may as well get in on the fun yourself.

The sword, thankfully, should not be sharp; nor do you need to worry about the most forceful blow. The bubbles take care of most of the work for you, as Champagne bottles have “the pressure of a London bus tyre,” according to the Milestone’s sommelier, David Nunes. A solid strike up the neck will get the job done, lopping off the cork and part of the bottle with it, and in moments like this, it’s best to remember Napoleon’s belief that in victory one deserves Champagne, and that in defeat, one needs it.