I court em like I did my 3rd wife and that seems to butter 'em up real nice like. Hope this helps.
Your best bet is likely rummaging around etsy or ebay for vintage corkscrews.
Jayson beat me to it. Just move it carefully and gently from the refrigerator to the cradle (or table) without changing the bottle’s orientation.
Just wanted to thank you for this recommendation. Made things even easier when I was double decanting a 1984 Laurel Glen for Berserkerfest. Another item I didn’t know I needed until I had it.
A friend, who went to an Audouze dinner in SF forever ago, uses the screw (only) from a Le Creuset.
https://www.amazon.com/Creuset-TM100L-31-Original-Table-Model/dp/B007FNMD7I/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=screwpull+wine+opener+long&qid=1634871487&sr=8-3
In the video, you can see Francois is using a method I described above, giving some rotational force, so the worm pushes the cork against one side of the neck, holding it in one piece as it is gently extracted. My Lagoile has a long enough worm to do this just fine. If it’s just a lower portion of a broken cork. you want a sharp tip to pierce, rather than push, then use the same technique. Either of these work for that, as would the seafood pick suggestion.
He goes through a lot of effort to loosen the cork from the neck first. The Durand method accomplishes that. Screw in place to hold the cork up, insert ahso, give a quarter turn to detach any adhered portion from the neck. Of course, once that’s in, might as well finish with that method. The downside here is you risk tearing up the outside of the cork with a ahso. If you want to save the cork, you’re best taking more effort.
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Excellent! I’m glad you found it helpful. Yes it’s another item, but it’s pretty cheap, which is more than can be said for almost anything else wine related.
Initially, I thought when I purchased the Durand wine opener it was too expensive.
But after using it for a few years and have taken older bottles to a restaurant and have them having problems with the cork, I can bring the Durand with me just in case.
I just use a shoe.
Or a lighter
I use Air Pressure Wine Bottle Opener. Although I have never had a bottle older than 1985.
For me Air Pressure works perfectly, especially because it extracts corks undamaged. And I’m guessing, why this kind of opener is so unpopular. Maybe there are some hidden disadvantages, like overaeration during the opening or it does not work with really old and crumbly corks.
Thus far, I have not been able to justify the cost of the Durand, despite regularly opening various older wines. I’m open to being proven wrong, but as someone who does not work as a sommelier for a living, it’s hard not to think about the wine that I can buy with that $120-140.
Interestingly, I bought a cheap Ah-so years ago, which held it own with many older bottles for 15 years, many of which had high sugar levels that caused corks to break down faster. After the blades had finally dulled from extensive use, I went out and bought a Monopole Ah-so, but have found so far that it does not grip the sides of corks as well as my old $5 Ah-so with the cheap plastic case. Maybe the blades on the Monopole came out of alignment while opening a stubborn bottle? Seems like all too often the Monopole pushes the cork down into the wine, and I’m forced to pour it through a filter. Then again, most reviewers of the Monopole seem to have had more success than I have had. They say to oil the blades periodically, but I never did that with the cheap Ah-so.
Positioning bottles before opening has not made any difference in my experience: aside from sparkling wines and extremely tannic reds, I do not normally reposition bottles in advance of opening them. Maybe I’m missing something here?
Finally, my experience has been that wines going back to the 1960s have not been affected negatively by being poured through a standard metal decanter filter when I need to remove bits of cork from the liquid.
2 page thread with some long answers and techniques that can be distilled to one word: Durand.
There are definitely expensive, but crappy, clunky ah-so’s and waiter’s cork screws. I’ve found good designs of both in the $6 range that are better than 90% of what’s out there. There’s some really well-built, good looking equipment out there that suffers in functionality.
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I find it surprising that there are not more (any?) Durand lookalikes when the price is so high. Here in Hong Kong one of my dealers sold me a couple of openers that, as far as I can tell from photos, are identical to a Durand and perhaps are the real thing, just with the dealer’s branding on the outer packaging. They cost me ~US$24 each, and they have been put to good use with things like older Chateau Musars and vintage ports.
Doorand?
Concerning the ah so and waiter’s corkscrew combo: Most people seem to recommend the Monopol Westmark Ah So for this. I’m wondering if there any recommendations of waiter corkscrews for this purpose.
I mostly follow this approach. When transporting the cellared bottle up to my living area I keep it horizontal and try not to disturb the sediment. I sit down with it, on one of my dining room chairs (hardwood floor) and then gently tilt it upwards to an angle such that when I remove the cork the wine won’t come out with the cork (essentially the same angle the bottle would be in were I to put it in one of those cradles). I then get up with the bottle, keeping at that same angle and again remaining careful not to disturb the sediment, and take it the few feet to the kitchen where I’ve got a decanter sitting on the counter. I then very slowly begin to pour the wine into the decanter and (depending on whether the sediment is the “sticky/pasty” type, or instead the very fine, powdery and not-at-all-sticky type) after the wine clears the “top” shoulder of the bottle I slowly rotate the bottle while still slowly pouring, such that the spine with all the sediment ends up on top, at which point I speed up the pouring into the decanter (due to the potential for the sediment to slough away from the bottle once it’s exposed to air). Works like a charm 99% of the time with the sticky/pasty sediment. However, with the powdery/not-so-sticky sediment I end up standing the bottle up in the cellar for a few days prior, as my experience with decanting off of that stuff has been a little bit better standing up the bottle. Fortunately, the vast majority of the sediment I encounter these days tends to be the sticky/pasty stuff. 