Use A Rolling Pin To Fit Corks Back Into Wine Bottles

Let's be honest, a wine bottle without a cork feels cheap — but corks can also be a real hassle. You run the risk of breaking the cork in half while trying to get it out and then once it's out you can never get the thing back in. Sure, you could buy an expensive little wine gadget that seals up the bottle and sucks all the air out, but not everyone's going to spend the extra cash on something like that.

If you've managed to keep the cork intact when you pull it out you could try to squeeze it back in, but it's compressed by a machine when they place it in the bottle, and once it pops out the cork swells up bigger than the opening. Not to fear, though. There's a neat little trick making its rounds on the internet about using a rolling pin to get the cork back in.

Take the cork and place it on a flat surface. Now take your rolling pin and work your way up and down the cork to flatten it back out. With any luck, the swollen cork will get thin enough to squeeze back in. Fair warning: If the cork has become dry and flaky, you run the risk of destroying the cork or breaking it apart which could get pieces of cork in the wine. So make sure the cork is solid enough to take the beating.

There are many things about wine that can feel convoluted, but recorking your wine is definitely not pretentious hype. If you open a bottle of wine and don't seal it back up, the wine is going to mix with the open air in a process called oxidation. Oxidation will give your wine a stale taste, somewhat bitter and 100% unpleasant.

High-end wine stoppers will remove the oxygen from your bottle, wine bars will vacuum out the air from their wine every night to avoid oxidation, and really high-end wine pourers will actually allow you to pour wine without ever needing to remove the cork in the first place — all in the name of limiting the time the wine spends in contact with the air (or oxygen).

Nine times out of 10, twisting the cork back onto the wine bottle is going to work — especially with a practiced hand. But sometimes the cork expands too much. If that's the case, try this rolling pin tip. Whatever you do, don't settle for an open bottle.