The Ritz’s head sommelier knighted (but not as you know it)

published 4 August 2017

Last week, The Ritz’s head sommelier was knighted as a chevalier of the Confrérie du Sabre d’Or - the Order of the Golden Sabre - in a ceremony at the iconic London hotel. Light-hearted as knightings go, the initiation involved the smooth beheading of a bottle of Barons de Rothschild Champagne using an 1815 sabre.

The art of sabrage has been going for more than 200 years, instigated by Napoleon’s soldiers, perhaps following their leader’s adage: ‘I drink Champagne when I win, to celebrate… and… when I lose, to console myself.’

The Confrérie was started in 1986 to continue the proud tradition; its members inaugurate caveaux and The Ritz, which celebrated its 110th anniversary last year, is now the latest participant and Giovanni Ferlito its Maître Sabreur. Nick Bromhead was also knighted as the hotel’s Deputy Maître Sabreur.

The Ritz’s sabreurs are now available for sabrage at the hotel’s private-dining events and the Order of the Golden Sabre holds a number of ticketed events every year in both England and France. Visit www.goldensabre.co.uk for information.

From opening to enjoying: A guide to champagne appreciation [VIDEO]

A lesson in champagne.

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.