Open a Wine Bottle Without a Corkscrew
Choose your method according to your tools.
You have a bottle of red wine sitting in the kitchen and you are just about ready to settle down and enjoy it and you discover that you can’t find the corkscrew.
You can almost taste that first bitter tang of tannin blended with a little oak, and smell all those wonderful berry fruit aromas. Blackcurrant and raspberry tickles your palette and you can feel it sliding down your throat, but you can’t get at it. You can see it through the glass, glinting at you.
Is this some form of slow torture, you ask yourself.
What can you next?
You could take a screw driver and dig the cork out but you would end up with little bits of cork in the wine. A tea strainer, or fine sieve would come in useful here, just won’t taste the same after you have had to go to all that trouble.
Maybe you could drill a hole in the cork and insert a straw. This is an ideal solution for anyone enjoying a bottle of wine alone but it doesn’t give you, or the wine, much time to breath.
You could place a blunt object over the cork and hit it with a hammer. This would push the cork into the bottle but every so often the cork bobs up into the neck of the bottle as you pour and makes the wine splutter out. You don’t want to waste any, so this isn’t very practical.
There is a very simple method that will remove the cork from a wine bottle (red, white, or rose).
- You will need a long screw, a screw driver and a claw hammer.
- Screw the screw into the cork. Screw it down as far as you can without going through the bottom of the cork as this will allow little bits of cork to get into the wine.
- Then take the claw side of the hammer and lever the cork out. It is really east to do. Just be careful that you don’t get too energetic about it and crack the bottle.
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Published in: Do-It-Yourself
Lucy Lockett | Jun 22, 2007 | Reply
Like a true wino! Well done, I truly wouldn’t have thought of that. I have ended up with afew small bits of cork in the wine once though!
Darlene McFarlane | Jun 25, 2007 | Reply
I wouldn’t have thought of it either. I have ended up with the whole cork floating inside the bottle.
Jeanette | Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
Clever, clever. Well done I will have to try this evening perhaps.
Tammy | Oct 15, 2007 | Reply
Great idea, I would of went to the store and bought an opener.
Amanda | May 26, 2008 | Reply
I tried the scissors trick simply b/c I had none of the other tools around.. and I didnt get soaked, but the CLEAN dishes and my walls did.. and I had bits of cork in my wine as well.. I wouldnt advise on the scissor method unless DESPERATE!
Robert | Oct 19, 2008 | Reply
WOW you saved me alot of time!!! i had everything within reach to do this. took 3 minutes.the only changes i would make is to put the bottle on the floor hold between hour two feet” I had sneakers on” and pull up. the screw in the cork wont move sideways and come out like it did for me the first.
Victoria | Dec 8, 2008 | Reply
didn’t have a hammer, but wedged the screw into the crack of a door at the hinge side then closed the door and it pulled right out. Did a small amount of damage to the soft wood but that is what gave me traction. Thanks .
Grissel | Feb 18, 2009 | Reply
just tried it, it worked! thanks no peices, no spilled wine, thanks
ANICK | Feb 25, 2009 | Reply
THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH… it worked wonders!!
Jane | Apr 17, 2009 | Reply
I don’t have a hammer