How to open a bottle of wine with a drill

We just got home from a long day of painting with two of our good friends N and C at our new house. Of course, to thank them for helping us out we were sure to order pizza, and offer them home made chocolate chip cookies some of our wine (well, we don't really make it ourselves, we just bottle it).

We have brought a few things to the new house that we thought we might need when we're over there working, like our camping pots so that we can boil water for tea, a few mugs, and some wine glasses. Unfortunately, our thinking ahead did not extend to a corkscrew. This put a damper on our much anticipated wine break, until C came up with a great idea. Why not use the drill that James had out and was using to build our new fence to get the cork out? Brilliant!

Better yet, we decided that instead of using a drill bit, which might just shred the cork, we should use a screwdriver bit with a screw attached. We had some great contractor's screws that we were using for the fence, so James drilled one into the cork. But then we had a problem. How could we get the screw and cork out?

In another flash of brilliance, we decided that a small pair of vice grips around the screw between the head of the screw and the cork would provide the grip that James needed to pull the cork out of the bottle, while I held the bottle firmly. We cleverly tilted the neck of the bottle upwards while pulling, and we hardly spilled a drop. Success!

(You could probably also do this with a screwdriver, although I strongly recommend using a drill for extra drama.)