How Big a Bottle Do You Need to Celebrate a World Championship?

My apologies to the reader who said my last post was too depressing. As a remedy, I’d like to share the exuberance of two world champions, and the very special liquid that they chose to indulge in to celebrate.

A story by Jason Gay in the WSJ described two team’s celebrations–consuming the world’s largest bottles of French champagne, known as The Ace of Spades. First, billionaire owner Mark Cuban treated his victorious Dallas Mavericks to a $90,000 bottle totalling 15 whopping liters. This is after the generous owner sprung for the cost of a victory parade in cash-strapped Houston.

The Boston Bruins haven’t won a championship since 1972. As Gay points out, their bottle of bubbly could have easily paid the salary of that year’s biggest star, Bobby Orr. But the team didn’t have to fork out $100K for the 30 liter bottle made by Armand de Brignac, in Bordeaux.

That was taken care of by the generous owners of Shrine’s, a sports bar located at Foxwoods Casino. The bubbly was drunk out of the huge bottle, itself the size of the Stanley Cup, and later poured into the cup to be consumed with a few people assisting the tippler.

But the cup couldn’t stay out as long as the Bruins. NHL attendants came and swept the silver cup away from the festivities to safeguard it in a locked storage room as the players partied on.