#howtoopenabottle

I’m you will agree there is nothing more satisfying than the pop of a cork coming out of a wine bottle. It’s the sign of the delight to come. But … we have all also had moments when removing the cork goes spectacularly wrong thanks to a corkscrew that doesn’t pull the cork out properly breaking it on its way out, or that drills into the cork at a 45º angle or more thereby ensuring you can’t reuse the cork (if you had needed to) or even better as happened with me recently leaving the cork behind altogether and gracing me with the gift of a clean removal of the corkscrew (the entire twirly) and a few tiny pieces of cork that flaked out as a giant F U. Forget 45º this corkscrew decided it would like to go waaay off centre down the side of the cork even though it started with the point bang in the middle of the cork. All this did was leave me feeling hugely frustrated and using rather expressive “garage language” and wishing I’d rather bought a bottle with a screw top instead of enjoying the calming and satisfying pop I know and love.

So I hear you wonder how did you get into the wine and more importantly was it corked?

My current rather delicious red wine (the name of which I apologise I have forgotten having had to discard the bottle) had a stubborn hanger inner cork which my corkscrew decided it did not like and would war against it. How exactly did it do this? Well the corkscrew refused to go in straight, would come out clean when I pushed the little arms down flaking only tiny bits of the cork in the process. Arghh… How to bring peace to the land? I had to go back to the way things were done in my early student days and I defy you my reader to state hand on heart you have never resorted to one of these guaranteed to work methods:

1. Push the cork into the bottle using back of a teaspoon, knife, fork or other implement (today someone told me they used a screwdriver), all of which requires strength and a lot bad language.  

2. Creative martial arts methods to skilfully break the neck of the bottle at a “special angle” on a pavement or edge of a kitchen counter which will keep the wine in the bottle giving you a clean break (yeah that method never worked for me either).

Now the mind is a funny thing, as I had forgotten why I own a corkscrew or two in the first place as after using the teaspoon, a lot of bad language and strength I didn’t know I had to push the cork into the bottle I was rewarded with a faceful of red wine which also sprayed all over my kitchen cupboards. Now I remember why that move was always done outdoors.

I had also forgotten that once the cork is in the bottle it bobs around the neck area and acts as a very effective stopper blocking the wine from coming out of the bottle when it is tipped over … So two plastic cutlery handles down the bottle later, I was finally able to get into the wine and immediately decanted it into another bottle – there’s no way my patience could handle doing that again.

This experience though reminded me of the fun we used to have in those early days at uni when no-one had a corkscrew and wine didn’t come with a screw cap. Invention and necessity being the name of the game. But as a slightly older and not always wiser person the experience also reminded me that that I really need to invest in a new corkscrew that isn’t wiggly with a mind of its own. After all a good quality corkscrew is worth its weight in gold.