To help me avoid the "hard work" in using a regular bottle opener (I normally use the screw with an opposing a rest on the bottle, which really isn't much work since you could open the bottle with one hand), my buddies gave me an opener with a giant needle, and a little canister of compressed air. You shuff the needle into the cork, press on the canister, the compressed air gets injected into the bottle, and out comes the cork. Easy. They warned me: "you just can't use it on those rubber corks."
Ok, I will just have a regular tool for that. Most old world wines don't use those rubber corks, and I haven't ran into one until this week. Preparing a spainish mackrel one night, I thought, hey, let me open a bottle of white. Oh crap! After I took off the wrapper, I saw the rubber cork. Having not had to deal with rubber corks so far, I still haven't gotten around to buying a bottle opener. Well, let me try it anyway. Stabbing the needle into the bottle was a little harder than usual, but hey, what the hell. Pushing the little canister, nothign happened. Crap. I want that white with my mackerl.
Pulling the needle out. Well, maybe if I just stab enough holes in that thing, I could get enough wine out for tonight. I put another 5 holes in that thing. The wine was bearing dripping out. I guess the rubber was designed to expand to seal the wine in. You know what, knowledge is accumulated. The smart ass I am quickly came up with an engineering approach. If I stab the need in, tilt the bottle so the compressed air is now trapped at the bottom, there would be enough pressure to push some wine out of the little holes I poked earlier.
And what do you know, the wine was shooting out of the bottle!
(kids, don't try this at home, compressed air is not safe!)
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