Tulleeho.com - Wine - Opening a bottle


Tull-ee-ho! : A combination of the old hunting cry Tally Ho! and the colloquial Hindi drinking word "tullee". Also Indian for cheers.

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Opening a bottle of wine : Alternatively subtitled - extracting the cork

A good wine like people of blue blood is not into mingling, and especially with the cork whom it's kept at arms distance for many a year. So, the primary skill in opening a bottle is to remove the cork and remove it in such a way that you are able to use it to plug the mouth of the bottle again without it being in a million pieces.

Foilcutter

The first step is to remove the foil covering the top of the bottle. If you have one, then use a foilcutter. The way to use this tool is to twist it around the top of the bottle and the four circular blades neatly slice through the covering capsules so that the top part of the capsule can easily be removed. Else use a knife to make a thin incision in the foil covering the top of the bottle, then peeling it off. Next wipe any dust or dirt off the bottle with a cloth or wet paper towel (especially the rim).

Now onto the cork. Remember that the cork has originally been inserted into the mouth of the bottle by compressing it and then when it enters the mouth of the bottle it expands to embrace the neck. Therefore extracting a cork requires applying a certain amount of leverage on it. After all it was Archimedes who said in around 240 BC, "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth." He probably had just invented the latter day version of the corkscrew when he made this statement.

The standard version of corkscrew which is used is based on research conducted by Leon D. Adams of the Wine Institute in San Francisco, and a famous physicist, Dr. Leonard B. Loeb. They published a seminal paper on the subject called "Corkscrews that work", in the Wine Review, May, 1946. Read it whenever you want to go to sleep.

The way to use this kind of corkscrew is to keep screwing the screw into the cork, with all the time the 2 parallel "wings" of the corkscrew rising until they are parallel with the screw and have reached their maximum height of ascension. Now bring both wings down and you shall see the cork rise. If the cork has not risen sufficiently for you to remove it then repeat the above procedure. This may have the detrimental impact of harming the cork however so it's best to get it done with the first time around.

Corkscrew

How to Open a bottle of Champagne click here...