How to open a bottle without an opener and 3 other must-have wine hacks

If you’re like 75% of people who drink wine, you’ve undoubtedly experienced a situation where you mess up. Years of experience as a sommelier have taught me how to handle most of these situations. Before you panic, here’s the trick to opening wine without an opener and other tricks to keep handy.

The Fresh Toast – You’ve been there, here’s the trick to opening wine without an opener and other tricks

Unchilled wine

Probably the most common problem people have is that right at the moment they want to drink a glass of rosé, they realize that the only bottle they have is room temperature. If patience isn’t a virtue you possess, the absolute quickest method I’ve found to cool a bottle without access to heavy machinery is to fill a large bucket with ice and add about 1/2 cup of salt (rock salt is perfect). ) and then fill about halfway with water. Insert the bottle and rotate it about every 30 seconds. You should have a chilled bottle in about 5 minutes, although for sparkling wine you would probably want to allow closer to 10 minutes; The thicker bottles take longer to cool down.

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Photo via Kaboompics

Broken cork

On the restaurant floor I encounter this problem fairly regularly and I have a number of tools at my disposal. Assuming you’re limited to standard wine openers, the techniques here vary depending on how badly the cork is broken. If the remaining part still seems solid, I would just dip it back in: this is where a waiter’s corkscrew comes in handy. However, when the cork crumbles, I often opt to simply push the cork into the wine. Some people then filter the wine through a coffee filter, cheesecloth, or strainer, but I prefer to decant the wine into a clean vessel and then pour it into another decanter: this allows me to remove all or nearly all of the cork without damaging the wine.

No wine opener

We’ve all been there: a bottle of wine and nothing to open it with. The best approach I’ve found is to get a fairly long key: maybe your car key, and slowly insert it into the cork. Once the bottle is in as far as it will go, slowly rotate it while gently pulling it up at the same time. It may take a while, but it’s the safest method I’ve found, both for you and the bottle.

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Photo by RondellMelling via Pixabay

Clean wine glasses

This requires at least a little foresight: cleaning glasses is much easier if you don’t let the wine dry out completely. Therefore, adding some water to the glass at the end of the evening will make your life a lot easier. I then like to use a damp cloth or rag and preferably no soap, as I find soap tends to leave streaks and stains on most wine glasses. If you have a hanging drying rack, that’s ideal, but if that’s not an option, I put my jars face down and flip them over an hour or so later. I usually still have to polish them if I want them spotless (and definitely spend $8 on a proper polishing cloth), but it helps minimize the water spots.

Go now and drink with confidence!