How to open a wine bottle without a cork-screw (and annoy your neighbours)

The background: We recently lost Jay's Swiss army knife, but more importantly the corkscrew it included.

The problem: We purchased a bottle of wine, but now had no cork-screw to open it. Was it an epic oversight and failure on our behalf? Certainly not! With the aid of one trusty shoe and a hard, brick surface, the cork from the wine bottle was unleashed, and the delightful liquid consumed shortly after. Here is how we did it.

What you need:

• One corked and unopened bottle of wine
  
  
  
  
  
• One shoe
  
  
  
  
  
• One hard surface 
  
  
  

What you do:

1. Place the bottle of wine inside the shoe like so:
   
   
   
   
   
2. Approach the hard brick surface. Strike the wall with the shoe-and-wine bottle ensemble, ensuring that the bottle is kept at a 90 degree angle to the wall to maximise the impact made on the cork.
   
   
3. Continue striking the wall until the cork is out far enough for you to pull it out yourself – the length of time this takes is directly proportional to the force with which you strike the wall.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Enjoy your newly opened bottle of wine! 
   
   
   

What we learnt:

• Do not use a shock-absorbent-type shoe. The reasons should be obvious. In retrospect, bottle-bashing is a good way of testing whether ones shoes are shock-absorbent or not, and we found out that Jay's boots are, whilst mine aren't.
  
  
• Neighbours in Napoli do not appreciate hearing a boot being belted against their shared apartment wall. Even in the name of wine consumption. At least that's the impression we got when angry heads started poking out of balconies to see what all the commotion was about. The issue came to head when one of the irate neighbours made his was down to our hotel reception and complained. This is quite ironic, considering that Napoli is arguably the noisiest and most chaotic city in Italy, maybe even Europe. Nevertheless our wall-knocking was definitely not appreciated.