Opening a bottle of wine without a corkscrew
 

Never had this problem with Boone's Farm. You are obviously drinking inferior wine.

I beg to differ,although at the times when I pracitsed this the quality of the wine was not realy imperative,to me it seems that the cheaper corks were easyer to open withouth the correct implement. Although,from the name of your chosen wine,although Im not so familiar with north american viticulture,I might detect a wiff of sarcasm,which in the very serious context of this thread,is certainly not called fore.

Just go down to the bar. They're usually happy to open a bottle for a hotel guest.

Judging from the hotel,and the fact that the hotel was in a rather small town in France,-I think it did not have a bar. Small French hotels generally do not have bars!!

But we're talking wine. And France. Even the smallest French hotel should have a corkscrew!! @:-)

Yeah and shouldn't every passerby on the street have one as well?

OK, just out of sheer curiosity, I bought a bottle of 2 Buck Chuck (or $2.50 rather) and tried this with an old boot of mine. I'm shocked and pleased to report this works. :)

It absolutely works. Did it this past summer at a family reunion.

On a different note... can anyone get a cork out from the bottom of an empty bottle of wine w/out breaking the bottle? Another great bar trick...

I'd guess in this case the front desk would have one. But, i've pushed more than my share of corks down into bottles, be very careful or you'll have a wine bath. I always have my house keys somewhere in my bag and my front door key is perfect.

The best part of this problem is the resulting problem! Since the cork is inside the bottle there is no option but to drink the entire thing!:D

Thus providing a full circle back to the "bugger I'm drunk" thread. :D

Many years ago... 10? I was at a tiny hotel near FCO with a bottle of wine I bought in Rome, wanting to drink it with my then GF before we flew back to the states the next day.

No corkscrew to be had anywhere. We kept trying to break the bottle to get in, but it just wouldn't budge. At no point did we think about pushing the cork INTO the bottle.

I felt stupid years later when I realized that.

Well here in Australia I would just twist the screwtop off.
90% of our wine (including imports) is bottled that way now.

I was going to mention this. Increasingly, you can find GREAT bottles of white with the screw cap, and decent reds with the same. Great red wines still tend to use a cork, but for casual drinking in a hotel room you can usually find something OK that is a screw cap.

And so many NZ pinot noirs now come with screw top thus allowing for great reds also. The only place I have problems now on this score is the USA which seems to have some prejudice against screwtops.