How to open a bottle of wine
Dave Koch | Friday, November 6, 2009 at 7:30AM 
Splat by ant.photos
We've all likely been there. At the BBQ, camping, or maybe on a boat. There sits the bottle of wine... and no one brought a corkscrew. The thoughts that go through people's heads. The tools they use. We humans are very creative creatures, especially when there is booze involved (think Legend of Zelda-themed party ice luge).
There's the Wikihow on how to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. They illustrate a technique using a screw, a screwdriver, and a pair of pliers (pulling it out, caveman-style) or a hammer (using a first-class lever which is much more civilized).
They outline the old pocket knife method, the wire coat hanger, the bicycle hook, the bootlace technique, and then there's the tried and true "two paper-clips and a pen."
And then there's these guys, possibly French from their accents, who are able to open a bottle of wine using only a shoe, a wall, and their staggering tenacity.
Our methods include only buying twist-cap or high-end boxed wines. Or, you could also just push the cork through and be done with it... but that's no fun, now is it?
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (2)
Yikes! All I can say is: SO been there and SOOOO done that! I remember my college roommate and I with a few bottles of wine after her graduation. For whatever reason we didn't have a wine opener (we were more beer drinkers at the time) and we were halfway to drunk city, so we took the end of a wooden spoon and a meat pounder and thankfully/safely collapsed the cork into the bottles. It required us to drink ourselves into oblivion for a night, but hey, happy graduation and for not totally shattering the bottles.
I've always wondered if the "push-through" would work. I'm going to try tonight with my fingers, see if I can manage.