I rarely drink wines older than 10-12 years or so, and I don’t really think that much about the cork. Tonight I decided to open an inexpensive Rioja from 2000, a wine I have only recently begun to enjoy. I could see the cork was stained almost half way up, and decided to try my crappy ah so.
What GregT said above was exactly what happened. The top two thirds of the cork broke off, and the bottom was firmly stuck in the bottle. Tried the cork pop on the remains because it was at hand with no success, then the ah so again. Carefully tried to work it out and ended up with a good part breaking and dropping into the bottle. Still left with a lot of the bottom part of the cork firmly stuck in the neck.
I’ve never used a Durand, but I think that the cork was so compromised that it probably wouldn’t have mattered. I think I have 4 bottles of 2000 and 2001 Rioja left, that I’m pretty sure cost less than half a Durand. If I drank more aged wine, I guess I’d get one,
especially if I was serving guests.
I decanted the bottle and poured it through two layers of cheese cloth, and am enjoying it a lot.
As to exploding the glass - Victor wouldn’t you have to put a hell of a lot of pressure in there? Can those cheap plastic things even pump that much in?
Yes. The whole idea of the Durand is to defeat the weaknesses of corkscrews AND ah-so’s.
With a corkscrew you can break a cork in half or over have the screw pull right out of the cork while the cork remains in the bottle neck. With an ah-so you can push the cork right into the bottle.
By putting the handled screw into the cork first, the ah-so cannot push the cork into the bottle because of the handle on the screw. I believe the added pressure the screw gives pushing out from the inside likely helps a bit too.
With both in place you can twist and pull the cork out. It is not full proof. I’ve seen very soft corks defeat the Durand. It is still a much higher percentage of success than one or the other by itself. It is also a good deal easier than trying to juggle a regular waiters screw pull and ah-so at the same time.
Value of course is different to everyone. Just get someone to gift you one and be done with it.
Way back when I used to open all my bottles with an ah-so. I had been told there was a risk of breaking bottles with them. I dismissed that notion right up until the day I broke a bottle. That was the day I stopped using an ah-so on a routine basis.
It has been said, but I think that current manufacturing is terrible. I have broken the tines on many ah-so’s and have also bought Monopole brand on Amazon and those have broken after one or two years of use too. Now I just buy old ah-so’s on ebay and my current one is at 3 years, at least.
I picked up a box of 10 old-new stock Mondavi Ah-so style openers from eBay for $35 back around 2010. They are stamped “West Germany” and have the higher quality finish, thin springy steel tines, and a perfectly flat rivet so I think they may be made by Monopole. I’ve seen other Mondavi ones that are not as high quality. They have been my go-to for a decade and I keep one in every car and travel bag. But since getting a Durand it’s been a no brainer to use for nicer bottles as it is so reliable in getting out the older crumbly corks. If I were to improve one thing on the Durand, it would be to make the tines longer as they often don’t go down far enough to cradle the whole cork if it has recessed or it’s an ultra long 45mm+ cork from a fancy bottle.
I attempted a poor-man’s Durand using a Euro-styled vintage travel corkscrew I got for cheap on ebay.
Obviously, it worked quite well on this cork (an '05), but I did manage to mess up a cork on the opposite end of the spectrum (an '82 soaked almost to the top). It came out quite nicely until the very end and would have probably been fine if the corkscrew and/or the ah-so were longer (or if I’d been a touch more patient).
Used my new Durand tonight on a 97 Brunello (wasn’t really that worried about the cork, but wanted to try it). I’m glad that I did, the cork wasn’t too bad but the Durand worked perfectly. I got it as a gift for Christmas, but I regret not just buying one a few years ago when I first read about it.
Interestingly (to me at least) in Hong Kong it is possible to buy Durands that are packaged for wine distributors at much more reasonable prices. I got mine for HK$180 (about US$23), and it is indeed most excellent. I use it most often with older bottles of Chateau Musar, which is notorious for soft and disintegrating corks.
For those who don’t have one, here is a video with Marc Hochar of Musar showing how to use a corkscrew and two-prong device together to the same effect:
Interesting. Of particular note here is that he does not straddle the corkscrew with the Ah-so, but rather inserts the Ah-so immediately adjacent to the corkscrew. I do wonder, is this is the manner in which others here, who recommend the Ah-so + corkscrew extraction method, go about doing it?
In your opinion, Al, does that work better than the Durand?
I know myself, and likely most (all?) others in this thread who have said their experiences with the Durand have been superior to their experiences with the corkscrew+Ah-so method, were basing that opinion on the ah-so straddling the corkscrew. I’ve never tried the corkscrew+ah-so method with them adjacent to eachother — have always done the straddle. Now I’m curious.
I haven’t used a Durand but I’m sure this method does not work better (why would it?). It generally works pretty well, though. FWIW, among the locals I know, they all use the adjacent method. Not a large number and may have influenced each other, though. But, I would not have tried it with the straddle method.
Well I haven’t handled one that came direct from Durand, but as far as I can tell from photographs online it is identical. And it works extremely well.
