The Auswine Forum

Hi Folks,

I've had a few problems recently breaking corks when opening older bottles (say > 10 years old) - especially on prestige wines with longer corks.

Unfortunately most of us will occasionally encounter corks that were never of good quality. Either that, or at some stages of life the storage was flawed.

I 'enjoyed' failure with both waiters' friend or 'winged arms' devices. I have occasionally seen (but not closely inspected) cork removers with two pronks that slide down the outside of the cork. I wonder if they might be more suited to longer and crumblier old corks?

Could I have your advice, please?

John

Those prong openers are caller an Ah-So after one of the makers or a butler's friend for the ability to open a bottle without damaging the cork. Definitely worth trying with crumbly cork.

cheers

Carl

The other trick is to see if you can loosen the cork by pushing it down slightly before trying to pull it out.

If you can, this will work.

Not all waiters' friends are the same; you need something with a long screw coming to a good, sharp point.

There's also fine-meshed stainless steel tea strainers - helps breathe the wine for immediate consumption. Ah, so......

if all else fails and your cork ends up in the bottle, you can also get cork retrievers that work very well for big pieces.

the best way i've seen, but can not remember the name of, is a gas removal system. its a small device with a needle that you insert through the cork and press to let the gas in. the gas pushes out the cork smoothly and has no affect on the wine. great product, i used to sell it at Grape indro so Michael mc nally might remember it.

jamie

hold on i think it was called 'cork pop'!!!!

JamieH wrote:the best way i've seen, but can not remember the name of, is a gas removal system. its a small device with a needle that you insert through the cork and press to let the gas in. the gas pushes out the cork smoothly and has no affect on the wine. great product, i used to sell it at Grape indro so Michael mc nally might remember it.

jamie

hold on i think it was called 'cork pop'!!!!

Hmm, (not him or her) think I've seen something about this one before, not cheap though from what I recall. Possibly good value if you're opening bottles of rather expensive, aged, cork-sealed wines fairly regularly. Obviously, the inert(?) gas recharges' cost should be related to the value of the wine they're deployed in opening.

I'll stick with the waiters friend and the tea-strainer.

Cheers

daz

from what i can remember, thats all customers used it for (opening old bottles). also the average for the refills was 100 shots, for $20 a cylinder it worked out to be 20 cents a bottle. funny how i can remember all that but the name was the hardest.

jamie

You can buy Cork Pop rip-offs from Peters for about $6 each. Made of plastic and come with one canister. Then you can buy the geniune refills $15 for 2 cartridges. They don't stock them all the time just get them in every now and again.

http://www.petersofkensington.com.au/Pr ... 15&cid=546

The old waiters mate and tea strainer still seem easier. What's the problem if the wine needs to be decanted anyway? Pfffttt, seems to be a storm in a teacup - or strainer - and somewhat of an anal psyche concern.

orpheus wrote:The other trick is to see if you can loosen the cork by pushing it down slightly before trying to pull it out.

If you can, this will work.

Not all waiters' friends are the same; you need something with a long screw coming to a good, sharp point.

Great tip will try in the future
regards Dazza

Hear, hear, Dazza. Thank you, Orpheus for the contribution. John

JamieH wrote:the best way i've seen, but can not remember the name of, is a gas removal system. its a small device with a needle that you insert through the cork and press to let the gas in. the gas pushes out the cork smoothly and has no affect on the wine. great product, i used to sell it at Grape indro so Michael mc nally might remember it.

jamie

hold on i think it was called 'cork pop'!!!!

Hi Jamie

The one I bought at the Grape (ahhh those were the days), was called Corky. I only found it through Google of course, but here's a gratuitous pic:


It was pump action (environmentally friendly???) but as I gave it to my father-in-law as a present and never heard of it again, I don't think it was brilliant. Perhaps you are thinking of another opener.

Hope you can make it to the next offline (must post that thread soon) as it would be great to catch up.

Cheers

Michael

www.wineaccessory.com/Images/corky.jpg



Sorry, just displaying how dumb I am.

Michael McNally wrote:www.wineaccessory.com/Images/corky.jpg



Sorry, just displaying how dumb I am.

Looks like you can use it to blow up mattresses too.