How do you open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew?

Pushing the cork in almost always works, and it does the bottle no harm.

A cork sits tight because it has been compressed into the neck. Pulling it out takes force and grip; pushing it in only takes patience and a blunt object that fits in the neck.

Expect a splash of wine to spurt up when the cork gives way. Hold the bottle away from you and wrap a cloth around it.

Place the bottle on a flat surface, put a blunt object in the middle of the cork and push slowly and straight down.

The handle of a wooden spoon, a sturdy pin or the handle of a whisk works well. What matters is that you push straight: with slanted pressure the cork tilts and jams.

The cork stays floating in the wine. Pour through a sieve or a coffee filter, and you will catch pieces of cork.

Turn a long wood screw almost all the way through the cork, hook the claw of a hammer under the screw head and pull straight up.

The screw must be long enough to get a grip in most of the cork, and the head must stick out above the bottle. Pull in one calm motion, not with jerks.

If a claw hammer does not work, pliers clamped under the head of the cork will do the job too. Keep pulling straight up, because sideways force breaks the cork.

Leave alone anything that involves heat or a knock on the glass, because a wine bottle is not made to be stressed in that way.

Heating the neck so the cork is pushed out, banging the base against a wall with a shoe around it, or prying a knife into the cork: with all three the glass can give way. A broken neck means shards in the wine, and you will not find all of them again.

Glass is a stable and impermeable material, and precisely for that reason unforgiving when it fails. The bottle then goes all at once, not with a small crack first.

Bottles with a screw cap and bottles of sparkling wine open without a corkscrew.

With sparkling wine, the second fermentation takes place in the bottle, so it contains carbon dioxide under pressure. Loosen the wire cage, hold the cork with one hand, turn the bottle beneath the cork and let the cork escape gently. Never point the bottle at anyone.

You open a screw cap with one hand on the cap and one hand on the bottle, so that the ring breaks off cleanly.