What to do when there’s no corkscrew
To get the wine flowing, we tried mix of tools, including shoe, bike pump
It’s Friday night and you can’t wait to crack open that delicious bottle of red. Your only problem? The corkscrew’s missing.
In the name of alcohol and all things red, white and rose, we tested out three creative techniques for opening a wine bottle without a corkscrew.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Test 1: The shoe method The tools A shoe, a wall. The method I took an old loafer-type shoe with a flat sole and placed the bottom of the bottle in the heel of the shoe.
Then, I held the shoe in one hand and the neck of the bottle in the other, keeping the bottle at a 90-degree angle to the wall, and slammed them both against the brick wall.
The science behind this experiment is that the impact of slamming the wine against the wall creates a force that transfers through the sole of the shoe, to the bottom of the bottle of wine bottle and into the liquid, said Rupp Carriveau, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Windsor and director of the university’s Turbulence and Energy Laboratory.
“You get that reactive force from the impact with the wall and it’s transferred through the wine up to the only thing that’s about to move, and that’s the cork,” he said.
“The fluid transmits the force almost like a solid would.” Carriveau has tried this technique on a bottle of sparkling wine. It worked, but spilled everywhere. The result After hitting the bottle against the wall 40 times, the cork came out about five millimetres. I hit it 40 more times, to no avail. I left it at that. Test 2: The screw method The tools A screw, a fork, pliers, a hammer. The method I tried inserting the screw into the cork with my hands, then gave up and used a screwdriver.
Next, I tried to coax the cork out using the prongs of a stainless steel fork — until I realized the screw was leaving indents in the fork. Then, I tried pliers, which coaxed it out about five millimetres.
When it wouldn’t budge any further, I tried using the claw end of a hammer. The result Nothing worked. I gave up. Test 3: The bike pump method The tools A bike pump, a pin. The method I pressed a pin into the cork, ensuring it poked a hole through the bottom of the cork. I removed the pin and inserted the bike pump needle in its place. Then, I pressed down. The result After just two pumps, the cork shot straight up out of the bottle. Without holding it, the bottle remained upright, ready for drinking. Conclusion The only times I run into the nocorkscrew problem is at 2 a.m. while travelling. But the only time I can imagine having a bike pump, yet no corkscrew, is during a bike tour of wine country. For those late-night, overseas wine hankerings, I’ll have to keep working on the shoe method.