Q. I wonder if you can advise me how I might remove a cork that appears to be firmly stuck in my bottle of Warre's 1958 Port.

A. You might try heating the neck of the bottle gently with hot water or over the flame of a candle. Try to keep the rest of the bottle cool with something like a damp towel, although Port is not likely to be affected by a small amount of heat.

With a little luck, the heat will expand the glass and break the cork's seal, which likely was created by a dried Port "glue." If you try water, keep the cork as dry as possible so it doesn't expand as well.

The other option would be to use a two-pronged cork puller (sometimes called a butler's friend or an Ah-So), which can reach down on the sides of the cork, and as you twist it, it should break loose the dried port that likely has formed the bond between bottle and cork.

Early synthetic corks also are susceptible to this problem. I recently had an older bottle of wine that simply would not give up its synthetic cork, and I ended up practically carving it out. That prompted a little research on my part, and I found out the hot water trick also is supposed to work with a stuck synthetic.

The heat expands the glass and apparently releases some of the aging lubricant in the synthetic, making it easier to pull.

The new screwtop closures also can present challenges, to judge from one reader's note. She struggled with a bottle of Pinot Grigio from one Washington winery until she dug out the tool box. "Being a plumber's daughter, I was able to find a solution to my dilemma - a pipe wrench now has a prominent place in my kitchen," she concluded.

Sparkling wine, despite its pressurized interior, can also be troublesome. Many years ago, one of the first sparkling wine releases from an Eastern Washington winery was virtually impossible to open without the assistance of a stout pair of pliers to twist the cork.

One imagines that the "sabering" trick sometimes used to open a bottle of sparkling wine must have originated from some poor cavalry officer struggling with a bottle of reluctant Champagne. The technique involves using a stout, short blade of good heft to strike the lip around the bottle neck. Done properly, it cleanly shears off the bottle top with a satisfying spurt of the bubbly, which supposedly carries away any bits of glass because of the wine's rather high pressure.

Harry McWatters, president of the Sumac Ridge Wine Group in Summerland, British Columbia, demonstrated the trick to several Wine Press staffers this summer. To ease the potential outcry from the world's safety inspectors, I'll remind our readers not to try this without protective eyewear and to experiment over a surface that rinses off and sweeps up easily.

Sorry if that removes all the potential glamour from my speculative concept of the trick's origin.

Creating a swirl: My last column prompted Joan Wolverton of Salishan Vineyards near La Center, Wash., which is about 15 miles north of Vancouver, to note someone in Washington, namely Salishan, has had more than a little success with Pinot Noir made from Washington-grown grapes. She felt perhaps I'd overstated the demise of this noble grape among the state's wineries, noting it's alive and well at hers.

"We were a bit disappointed you overlooked the fact we have grown and made Pinot Noir wine, including a number of gold medal winners, for 30 consecutive years in Washington state," she noted.

Joan sent along a sheaf of clippings, dating from the 1980s to 2003 that recounted the winery's accomplishments over the past three decades, many of them pronouncing that its Pinot Noir is fine stuff indeed. Among the clips was one from my own newspaper, the Tri-City Herald, noting a 1986 Salishan Pinot Noir had won best of show at the Tri-Cities Wine Festival in 1989.

Despite my memory lapse, Joan's comments and Salishan's location do reinforce my point that Pinot Noir might best succeed in Washington west of the Bingen-White Salmon area not far from the Columbia River and "on a south-facing slope in the foothills reaching up toward the Cascades."

Among the stack of newspaper and magazine clippings she sent along was a bit of history worth repeating. In a Seattle Times column dated June 28, 1989, the late Tom Stockley noted there were more than 150 wineries in the Pacific Northwest.

Only 16 years later, it's a delight to note that number has surpassed 650, a growth rate that means 2.6 new wineries have opened somewhere in our burgeoning region every month since Tom's column appeared.