Open Wine In A Pinch

When I was a Sophomore in College, I helped my girlfriend at the time move in to a new apartment. It was a cramped little hole of an apartment, but move-in day was made brighter by the fact that the new landlord left a bottle of red wine for her sitting on the counter. Total score.

Being 19, free alcohol was the pinnacle of all things holy. However, also being 19, neither of us had ever really had wine...or knew how to serve/store/open it. But hey, free booze - we were going to make the most of it. We also weren't going to question why this landlord was leaving alcoholic beverages for clearly underage college kids - when in Rome...

First things first: let's get this baby chilling. We popped the bottle of red wine into the fridge to get it cold. Patience not being our virtue; this was taking too long. "Put it in the freezer for a bit to get it really cold," she said. Excellent idea.

Once the bottle was nice and frosty, we found 2 plastic cups and were ready to enjoy our bounty. Removing the foil top, we were suddenly faced with a new paradox: cork. I remember searching the side of the bottle, thinking maybe there was some sort of special opener attached to the bottle that I'd missed. Nope.

Now, before you go mocking me and my 19 year old ignorance - remember back to when you first started enjoying adult beverages....were you the alcoholic connoisseur (lush) that you are now? No, you were equally clueless as me. Back to the frosty Merlot....

Like a rabid dogs, we clawed at this cork with a knife - eventually excavating enough cork that the remainder could be pushed into the bottle. At last, our ice cold Merlot (complete with cork floaters) was flowing into two Twins plastic cups. The 45 minutes of ice time combined with the 15 minutes of knife hacking had built up expectations that, 'this better be good.'

It wasn't.

Cold red wine tastes like licking a metal spoon. "Maybe it was just the first sip," we thought. Like when you first tried beer...that wasn't good right away either. Another sip. Gag. "Why are all those rich people SO into wine? Nasty," we said.

It wasn't until a few weeks later that we learned that 1.) Red wine should be served room temperature and 2.) The proper way to wield a corkscrew...which is far superior to a kitchen steak knife.

That story was just a lead up to showing you this great video I found on how to open a bottle of wine - should you too find yourself without a proper corkscrew. Enjoy, and thank me someday. Also, it's in French, which I think classes up this seedy blog.