Have you seen this video of a Frenchman opening a bottle of wine with nothing more than a shoe and a wall? It's been all over the internet the last few days. We were very impressed by the effective brute simplicity of his method, but it turns out that people have been using similar ways of taking out a cork for a long time. See two more videos below!
With a tree....
...and with a phone book!
Do you have any other creative (and simple!) ways of opening wine when caught without a corkscrew?
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Comments (22)
Wow that is pretty clever!!!
I've read before that you can open a bottle of wine just running the top under hot water? I'm not sure though..
Did you running low on relevant things to discuss??? Maybe it is time to start recycling older stories.
I have found myself in this situation so many times! Definitely will have to try the shoe trick.
There's also the screw and hammer technique if you have tools around. I bet this will come in handy sometime!
That's hysterical. Geeze, Pierre, every party has a pooper...
Seems like a good party trick, probably only try it once on a cheap bottle... just in case I use too much force.
this is great to know, thanks!
That's a great trick!! Thanks. And Pierre, some of us appreciate the trick. It's novel and one day, you can impress your friends, too!!
This would've come in handy before I bought my nice corkscrew...but I'd be way too freaked out about ending up with shattered glass and wine everywhere.
I once witnessed a Czech winemaker open a bottle with a full sized axe. Lopped the top clean off.
I wish I had this trick freshman year of college, when someone had gotten their underage hands on a bottle of wine but none of us could figure out how to open it, since we only had beer bottle openers. Memories...
Brilliant. I've seen all sort of tricks for opening bottles of beer (cigarette lighter, another beer bottle, the side of a table), but never for wine.
I love how tipsy they all seem in those videos. but how did they get so drunk if they didn't have a corkscrew?
I have been in this predicament so many times. Love the ingenuity and physics of it all. Reminds me of a squirrel with a nut.
My sister and I have used our patented "mascara" trick for years (we only buy thin tubes of mascara, they are sturdy and fit inside the neck of a bottle of wine) to push in the cork when corkscrew-less.
You just have to finish the bottle in one sitting, since the cork is now floating inside the bottle of wine. Still, if you do it right (handy trick when camping, or traveling in foreign countries late at night), you won't spill a drop. Just position the tube of mascara over the cork, push down, voila.
I like this method better, though.
great trick! next time i know what to do. thanks
That's hilarious. I love how the second guy reaches up and plucks a wine glass out of the tree.
Totally agree with you, gourmandizzy.
Those were the days.
But hey, you never know when the knowledge might come in handy again.
How fun! I appreciate the lightheartedness of this post. Pierre's such a hater.
a pool cue will work if you don't mind drinking a little bit of cork...
IF only this was posted 2 weeks ahead... my family was in Vegas and got complimentary bottles of wine but were offered a corckscrew for $3!! Probably wouldnt have impressed my parents that much, but they would have been secretly proud!
A few more videos here: http://winedigger.blogspot.com/2009/06/opening-bottle-without-corkscrew-mode.html
The 4th one from the top is priceless! :)
Alex.