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Opening a bottle of wine means removing the cork. For this, you need a corkscrew. A good corkscrew will neatly extract the cork; a poorly designed one can shred the cork, leave cork particles in the wine, or even push the cork into the bottle. Buy a good corkscrew here.
There are four steps involved in removing a cork from a bottle of wine:
- Remove the foil and clean off any debris
- Insert the worm
- Extract the cork from the bottle
- Remove the cork from the corkscrew
Removing the foil. Some corkscrews have a knife to peel off the foil, or a slim blade designed to rotate near the bottle rim and slice it through. Modern Foil Cutters are a real boon for this job, too. Some 19th Century corkscrews had a stiff-bristled brush to get rid of any debris or fungus that might have accumulated on top of the cork. Since most contemporary wines have some chemical to prevent bacterial growth, fungus is no longer a big problem. As it happens, a damp paper towel serves the purpose better, so there's no real advantage to a corkscrew with a brush.
Inserting the worm. The worm should be 1 1/2 to 2" long, in order to grip the length of the cork. The worm should be helical, with round, not sharp, edges. Worms with sharp, flanged edges will slice the cork, a particular disaster with wines with old corks grown soft in the middle. The point of a worm should indeed be a point and follow the shape of the helix so that it opens a path in the cork through which the rest of the worm can easily slide in without damaging the cork.
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Some worms end with the point in the middle. These are easy to center - place the point in the center of the cork and start turning. The disadvantage to these is that the succeeding rounds of worm cannot follow the curve of this point and, thus, "break new ground" all the way down through the length of the cork, as it were. The effect inside the cork of such a point is like an auger's, drilling a hole through the cork as the worm penetrates. |
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Credit for these insights goes to Leon D. Adams of the Wine Institute in San Francisco, and his research colleague, a famous physicist, Dr. Leonard B. Loeb. In 1944, these gentlemen tested every shape of corkscrew they could get their hands on and published their findings in a paper, "Corkscrews that Work", in the Wine Review, May, 1946.
Many corkscrews are designed to help position the worm so that it's centered. There are closed, open, and split frames that seat on the bottle's rim and assist or even assure centering. A contemporary Swiss corkscrew made by Zyliss is a particularly good example of this.
Extracting the cork. A cork is compressed to get it inside the bottle and, once inside, expands to grip the neck of the bottle. Breaking this grip and removing the cork requires a pull equivalent of lifting about a hundred pounds. What makes corkscrews interesting is that for over three centuries, people have designed various mechanisms--simple and elaborated reduce the amount of force you have to apply.
With a few notable exceptions, all of these mechanisms can be classified into two categories: leverage, wherein a simple or a compound lever reduces the amount of force you have to apply, and torque, where a turning handle, acting like a nut on a bolt, provides the mechanical advantage.
There are also two mechanisms that don't use a worm at all. One relies on two prongs that grip the cork and pull it out with a turn of the handle, and the other pumps air into the bottle, forcing the cork upwards.
Removing the cork. For the most part, it's "hold the cork" and "twist". Some corkscrews have an open or a split frame so that your fingers can hold the cork as you turn the handle to remove it from the worm. Some have flanges inside the frame that "grip" the cork so that instead of struggling with the cork you can hold the frame.
When you're looking for a dependable corkscrew to neatly take the cork out of a bottle of wine, consider the essentials, and start here!
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