Cracked open a bottle

It's almost 1.30pm on Friday here and I just told a friend that the sun's now over the yardarm, so I just cracked open a bottle and am now supping my wine.

Given we usually either uncork, or these days shudder to say, unscrew wine bottles, or even uncap beer bottles or whatever - how did the term 'crack a bottle' open start. I can't imagine that it would ever be desirable to crack a bottle open, given it would leave shards of glass or even pottery if that's what the bottle was once made of. So I'm wondering why that term ever came about.