Thomas.D There is nothing more stressful than having to open a wine bottle without an opener while your guests are waiting. If for one reason or another you need an alternative way for removing the cork, don’t worry anymore, we have gathered the best solutions for popping that pesky cork out like a pro!
How to get a cork out after it fell in a bottle of wine?
Did you just push the cork too hard and it fell inside the bottle? You’ll be happy to know that there is also a trick for that. To get the cork out of the bottle, you will need 2 things:
- A small cord (you can use a string or a shoelace)
- A small stick (like chopsticks for example)
Now, here’s what you will do:
- First, make a nod around the endpoint of your shoelace.
- Of course, make sure everything is perfectly clean because it will go in your wine in just a minute.
- Then, put the shoelace in the wine bottle, nod first.
- With the chopstick, you will try to place the nod under the cork and slowly pull to get the cork and the shoelace squeezed together.
- Finally, pull the shoelace hard until the cork is out. The nod under the cork will prevent it to fall back into the bottle.
Top 6 tricks to open your wine bottle
You can’t find the corkscrew and you feel like you’ve been ‘screwed’? Let’s not panic yet, here are a few tricks you can use to remove the cork from your wine bottle:
How to open a wine bottle with a Knife
First and foremost, find a thin and pointy knife in your kitchen. Before you start, please, be careful when you are going to use the knife. To begin, you are going to stick the knife through the top of the cork. Once the blade is firmly stuck in the cork, you will need to push the knife in a circle, as if you were trying to unscrew the cork. If you do this properly, the cork will start popping its head out of the bottle.
How to open a wine bottle with a shoe
When there is a will there is a way, as they say! To open your wine bottle with a shoe, firstly, put the bottle in a shoe of your choice. Secondly, go next to a wall. Thirdly, you will hold the shoe and the wine bottle horizontally. Now, with a bit of strength and a lot of conviction, you are going to repeatedly tap the wall with the back of your shoe. Basically, the latter acts as a protector for your wine bottle. The small shocks between the wall, the shoe, and the wine bottle, will gradually push the cork out of the bottle. As a final step, you can use your hand to pull the cork out.
How to open a wine bottle with a bike pump
This trick is the easiest trick in the bunch! It’s so easy that you will ask yourself why you never thought of that one before. Simply put, you just need to stick the tip of a bicycle pump between the cork and the inside of the bottle. In other words, you want the air of the pump to go inside the bottle, between the wine and the cork. Once everything is ready, pump some air inside that bottle of wine! The cork will slowly come out. You can finish the job by pulling the rest of the cork with your hands or with a tool.
How to open a wine bottle with a key
This is a bit similar to our trick with the knife, but this time you are going to use a key, which is safer than using a knife. Also, the major difference here is that you will need to stick the key inside the cork at an angle, almost as if you were trying to go through the bottle’s tip with your key. To make it easier at the beginning, you can try to twist the key in and then push it once it’s inside the cork. Thereafter, just try to rotate the cork with the key until the latter is out of the bottle.
How to open a wine bottle with a hammer and a screw
Whoever thought of that one first was a genius! To pull this trick off, you will need a hammer, a screwdriver, and a screw. First, you will gently twist a screw in the middle of the cork. Be careful, don’t push too hard because if you do, the cork will fall in the wine. Then, with the hammerhead, you can pull the cork out like you would pull a nail out of a wood plank.
If you don’t have a hammer handy, then you can use a fork. To pull the cork out with the fork, just insert the screw between the fork’s teeth and push with your two hands under the fork. For best results, put the bottle between your legs and use your thumbs for pushing the fork up.
How to open a wine bottle with heat
And if we told you that all you need to open your wine bottle is a lighter? That’s right, you only need a flame and a bit of patience to pull this one off. Your friends will be very impressed on top of that, so it’s a win-win! So, to do this, hold the bottle at an angle. Now, use your lighter just under the cork and turn up the heat for 1 to 2 minutes. With a bit of patience, the hot air in the bottle will eventually push the cork out. Congratulations, you just used science to open a bottle of wine!
And that completes the list of our best tricks to remove a cork from a wine bottle without a corkscrew. As an extra note, make sure that the wrapping around the cork is always removed before using any of these tricks.
