October 14, 2003
Corkscrew Troubles
File this under the 'how to uncork a bottle without a corkscrew' drawer:
Parker got a bottle of wine today, but he realized that we have no corkscrew at our apartment, the heavy drinkers that we are. So it was time to improvise. Parker first though of screwing a screw in with a regular screwdriver, then he realized that I had a drill. He suggested drilling through the cork, but I figured you'd end up getting cork in the wine, which would be no good. We put the ideas together and used the drill to screw in the screw into the cork, but then of course we still had to pull the screw/cork out. Parker tried pulling with pliers, and that probably would have worked with some real effort, but before we tried to hard at that, I went and grabbed the hammer. Using the claw, we pulled the first centimeter out easy until we ran out of bottle to pry against. We were close to completion, so we just muscled our way to the finish, with Parker pulling down on the bottle, and me pulling up on the hammer. 'Muscled' being relative of course. Now Parker could enjoy his wine and I could come here and tell all of you about it.
Now that's engineering in action. If you are nerded out by this story then you shouldn't be here in the first place =)
Posted by ramk at October 14, 2003 08:33 PMI've run into this problem before. Several times in Europe (we resorted in buying twist off wine after we left our friends who bought a swiss army knife with one in it, it was cheaper anyways) and hotels since its hard to travel with a corkscrew nowadays. but usually the front desk will have one. anyways, pushing the corkscrew into the bottle if done correctly isn't too bad. as long as the cork doesn't break apart too much. just be gently either way you go. little pieces of cork tend to take away from the taste. or you could just spend $3 on a cork screw.
Posted by: sunny at October 15, 2003 01:21 PMThat's an awesome story.
Posted by: Nick at October 15, 2003 07:58 PMSunny advocates twist off.... I'll go a step further and advocate box wine. I saw an article on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools website that talks about the virtues of box wine. Besides, what makes any of us wine experts anyway? (My mom makes wine, and I still don't know the difference.)
Posted by: miked at October 16, 2003 02:26 PMThanks very much for the tip. I found your site in frustration and found a much-needed solution.Now I am inebriated and classy. I will remember to purchase a 3 dollar corkscrew. Wait- I will find a 5 dollar corkscrew next time, because the broken $3 corkscrew is what got me here in the first place.
Fantastic and functional web site. Thanks.
Jay
Thanks for the comment Jay R. I did a search for the same string you did, 'without a corkscrew' and I hit this site, which has a arguably cooler method - tapping the bottom of the bottle against a hard surface. Sunny is skeptical, and I am a little too. The guy even has a movie of him doing it. Cool stuff.
http://www.secretspotbaja.com/tightspots/tightspots1.html
Posted by: Ram at December 2, 2003 06:25 PMIt definitely works. I took the video you are describing at the URL link.
Posted by: Phill at June 6, 2004 03:56 PM