Sommelier Tests 13 Wine Opening Gadgets | World Of Wine | Bon Appétit

Two, and then like that. That, I wasn't expecting. I thought you were like gonna be pumping and pumping and saying, damn, I'm embarrassed. That was really cool. I'm dumbfounded, guys. I don't know what to say. Hey, I'm Samuel A. Andre Houston Mack, and today I'm gonna be reviewing every different type of wine bottle opener. There's tons of tools and methods to remove the cork. Some of them simple, some of them very complex. And today we're gonna see which ones are worth your money. So this is the Butler's Friend. This is also known as an Ah-So. It's called the Butler's Friend because the butler could actually open the bottle of wine without the owner knowing and take us a couple of sips for himself. It does leave the cork intact and it doesn't put a hole through the center. You have these two prongs here, little Wolverine action. It doesn't have a traditional foil cutter, but if you use it for a while, you can use the point of this to kind of serrate and cut the top off. So you see it's one side that's longer. This one's a little bit shorter. And if you look in here, you can kind of see like the rocker mechanism in there. Start with the longest side and you kind of just want to wedge it in between one side of the cork. And then you put the shorter side in. And then basically you have it in and now you're just going to rock back and forth like this. It takes a little bit of effort, but once you get it down, it's pretty easy. So now it's flush with the cork and now you just want to twist and turn, twist and turn, twist and turn, and voila. It does damage the cork a little bit here, but you're still getting the cork out. It's probably the same amount of force that you would use on the traditional waiter's corkscrew where you have the lever. I love this tool. When I worked at Fancy Restaurants, we always had one in the sommelier station. And if you're into wine, it's kind of geeky. You collect gear. You always want to have one of these in your gear box. This is always fun and interesting and actually opens a bottle of wine. My wife used to carry this in her thigh-high boots at work. This is called a travel corkscrew. I can understand why. You just kind of pull right out. You see something that looks familiar. That's the helix that you find on a traditional corkscrew. And then you have this hole here and then you put the plastic between here and then it kind of works like this. I actually hate these things. A lot of times the helix isn't long enough. It's pretty flimsy. So it's going to bend. And then these kind of crack sometimes. But because it doesn't have a knife on it, it is TSA approved. So you can move freely within the airport and through security. Hence now the name travel corkscrew makes a lot of sense. So now we have our bottle of wine. There's no foil cutter here. So generally you can just pull these things off. So we have helix and we're just going to go a little bit off center and twist. We have it in. And then now we just want to pull. I'm going to break this thing. I might have to put it between my legs. All right. So it's slowly coming out. Slowly, slowly, slowly. And now that does take a little bit of elbow grease. It could be cumbersome for sure. You're doing this. You could hit yourself in the face, right? That doesn't feel too good. Sometimes there is a lot of spillage. I would say the spillage level on this is probably, you know, eight out of 10. It just does take a little bit of force. Kind of not my favorite, but in a pinch, it'll work. So this looks very familiar. This is generally called a waiter's corkscrew. This is the most synonymous with when you're talking about a bottle of wine. What makes these a little special is because they have a hinge system here. So it just allows you to kind of choke up on it, if you will, to make it a little bit easier to open the initial pop. This is called the lever right here. Here is a foil cutter. Here is what you call the helix or people call it the worm. And this is the handle. So we're going to pull out the foil cutter. The way I would do it at a restaurant, you want to cut underneath the second lip. Traditionally, capsules were made of lead. So you didn't want any of the wine to come in contact with lead. So that's why you cut underneath the second lip. You make the first cut around the front, one around the back, and then one on the side, and the foil should just come off very easily. So we'll open it up. This is a great size helix. As you can see, you have enough to actually fit through the cork. And also it's Teflon coated. So it goes through the corkscrew a little easier. I'm right-handed. I generally do it like this. My right index finger, you can see at the tip, is the tip of the helix. And then we just want to apply it a little bit off center and then press in and then turn. So now we're just turning the helix here. What makes it special is that there are two hinges here. You want to screw it into the first one here. I apply pressure with my thumb and then I just pull here. So that's the first one. And then you kind of jack it like a car jack, move it up to the second one and then pull up and then you can just twist and pull out. So very easy, very simple. This is the tool of choice. Fun, interesting, easy to use. One of the best out there. This is very similar in style of a waiter's corkscrew. But as humans, we need options. You have a car, gets you from point A to point B. It could be a Hyundai or it could be a Ferrari. And so this is a specialty wine key that was designed by moi and Craig Hill. And this is called the best wine key. If you're not trying to be the best, then what's the point? What most of you probably haven't seen is this thing here. And so it's a ratchet system. You want to have a ratchet system or a longer hinge here so you can open up older bottles. A lot of old Bordeaux bottles have longer corks. And so the older they are, they become fragile. All right. So now we'll go ahead and open up and we have like a little catch lever. See, it just kind of swings here, but you just lock it in place here. So it doesn't swing. Go ahead and remove our helix. Go right in, a little off center. You go off center, then it actually makes it center. If you go in the middle, then it'll be offset just because of how the worm works. All right. So then we'll go ahead and go to the first lever here. So it just really kind of just works like a crank and then voila, we're out. It just makes it much easier to open a bottle of wine really using no force at all. And then when you get to those older bottles, it makes it pretty much a cinch. A lot of sommeliers, you treat your wine opener as your lightsaber. To be able to design your own, I think is a very special. I'm honored to be able to do it. That's what it's all about. Making a difference. Oh yeah. One of the most coveted tools in the wine industry by professionals. A game changer ever since it came on the scene in 2007. This is called a Duran. It's basically merging old with new. So this is the helix, which you know from a waiter's corkscrew. And what you're left with here is an asso. Older rare bottles of wine, generally, you know, you're opening things from the forties, the fifties, the tens. A lot of those corks are crumbly. They're old. They've been stuck in that bottle for many years. When you go in, they can start to crumble or they're wet and soggy. So they'll fall apart. One surefire way to eliminate, you know, 95% of that was this thing here called a Duran. We pull them apart. We have our two pieces. We're going to start with our helix, all centered and we're in. So we want to screw down pretty flush. So we have it here. Now what we want to do is we want to use our asso. So we know the use of longer side first and we're just going to go opposite of the helix handles here. So we'll go in here. And so now we just want to rock back and forth. And now the asso part is in contact with the helix part. And then now you have their little twist handles here. And so now you just kind of twist and turn and pull and everything's intact and out. I would say this is probably more for your professional or your collector. It's expensive, but in comparison to opening up priceless bottles of wine for $60,000, $40,000, it's a drop in the bucket. In all my restaurants, we have these for the staff to use. I think it's great. We are moving on to what I like to call the Sky Mall section of wine openers. This is called a wing corkscrew. Fly Pelican, fly, fly. This is the kind of one that you find at your grandma's house or Airbnb, if they even have one. A lot of times these are poorly made. The gears are always stripped. And I think that's kind of where it goes wrong. But in a pinch, these work. And you see here, this part that looks like the face, it's a bottle opener as well here. So we'll just go ahead and place this part over the bottle. And then we'll just start to twist. Fairly easy. The wings are rising. That looks about right. And we're extracting. So this is where it gets tricky. It's out. Sometimes it's not out enough that you can just pull it out. And now you got to rock it a little bit to pull it out, but voila. This particular type of gear system feels much easier. And I guess more comfortable for a lot of people. You're actually using the table and the solid foundation as a way to extract the cork, right? In a pinch, it will work. Will you find one of these at my house? Probably not. If you're going to have one of these, I would say at least buy one of quality. So spend maybe a few extra bucks, make sure that it's metal. You can't go wrong. It works. Moving right along, we have the rabbit lever corkscrew. Wow, this thing looks like something out of the future, but I do see a helix. So I'm familiar with that. Here's a little gear system here. I've used these on many big events. You're opening over a hundred bottles of wine and maybe it's just you or two other people. The motion that you're doing is a lot easier. It's a quicker way to be able to get through them. So I don't discount it in any way. Now, if you came to my house for dinner and we were opening three or four bottles, I wouldn't pull this out. It also comes with this in the packaging. This is a foil cutter. Place it right on top of the bottle. And so you basically just squeeze in and twist it in turning, and then the cap comes out. I'm going to start in this position. I'm going to place on the bottle here. I'm gripping, so it's applied pressure here. And now we're going to take this lever here and pull forward. And now we're going to pull this way. And like magic, it is out. Very quick, maybe three seconds. Not a lot of effort. If you want to remove the cork, there it is. As you're older, if you have arthritis, you have grip issues or any type of disabilities, I think this is probably the go-to tool. It's a fun tool. I can see how people gravitate to it. It's actually really cool, to be honest with you. So next up, this is the Tizene Air Pump Bottle Opener. There's a needle here. So this will push air into the bottle. The pressure from the air being placed in the bottle will push and lift the cork out. Got it in theory here. I've never used any device like that that you have to pump the air into, but I'm eager to give it a go. To be honest with you, I've never seen anything like this. I'm not real sure the need for it. What does the box say? Does it say anything on why you would need to use this? Let's check it out. I think we need some wine here. So, air pump. We're going to push it through the cork. It's going to penetrate the cork there. And, fairly easy. And now, we pump air into it. It's so funny, I understand the premise. It definitely works, right? Yep, look at that. I thought it was more work. It's not more work. That's like two, and then like that, and it'll come right out. That, I wasn't expecting. I thought you were going to be pumping and pumping. It's not. It's like two pumps. Two and a half pumps, three, and it's done. Now it all makes sense to me, because if you're thinking about the fill level is here, so the amount of air that you're actually pumping into here is maybe about a half an inch, maybe an inch. All right, I stand corrected. I'm an honest man here. That's kind of cool. Damn, I'm embarrassed. That was really cool. I don't even know how to remove the cork. Oh, man, these guys are smart. Okay, so this piece here, you just hold here, and you pull the piece here, and the cork comes out. That was easier than all of the tools that we did today. All of them. If we're talking about disabilities, or not having grip issues, or other, I mean, I'm dumbfounded, guys. I don't know what to say. Just not telling anybody? Okay, so here we have the automatic pressurized bottle opener. This is called Cork Pops. So you can see the needle here. Ah, you know what? Now this works, it's kind of in reference to the, it was the hand pump version that we were using earlier. This is the automatic pressurized. So they're using some type of gas. So you take your gas cartridge, and you would insert it in here, and it kind of locks just a little bit. So this little cartridge here opens 60 bottles. Also, what I just noticed on this thing, because I never read the instructions, this bottom part is a foil cutter. So we're going to apply it on the top here, and we're going to squeeze and cut, and foil is off. All right, now we're going to insert. It's in. And now we're going to press the button. There you go. That is the quickest. But I have to tell you, there's something about it that's different to me. You can see that there was gas, and that there was some spritz in the wine. Are we splitting hairs here or anything like that? Like, I would say is like, that just feels a little too aggressive. I'm sure people are going to look at this and be like, it doesn't make a difference. People are particular about their wine, right? They don't want to alter it in any way, right? You know, it's art, right? So they want to drink it in the way that the winemaker, slash, you know, the artist intended it. So some people are weird about that. People would be apprehensive about this, using this on an expensive bottle of wine. It's pretty fast. But I'm not real sure if speed is of the essence in a casual setting at home, right? Like, you can wait another 10 seconds and have it open, maybe, you know? This is not the Olympics, right? You're not running a race. Today just keeps getting stranger and stranger. I've never seen this thing before. This is called the Champagne Lever. I guess it's a tool to open a bottle of champagne. It's bottled under pressure. And so the cork is live. Some risk involved in opening it. And I think people get anxious behind that. Using these two puppies right here has always kind of worked, but I'm interested to dig a little deeper here and maybe be enlightened. So we have our sparkling wine here. You always want to be careful opening bottles of champagne. Make sure that you always keep your thumb on top of the cork. Hold on to the bottle, six half turns, and then it'll open. And you want to kind of loosen the cage a little bit. And this is where it comes tricky because it'll always tell you at this point, you can't take your thumb off. But with this particular device, you have to remove the cage. And you just want to be careful, right? Like pointing this around in any direction, talking, lollygagging. This is like a loaded weapon. You're going to place this between the glass and the cork on either side. Like this is this little groove here, right? So now we squeeze them down. We have a grip on the cork. And now we would pull this lever here. I just never know. See, maybe I'm a boomer. Maybe I'm stuck in my ways. That was pretty simple, felt safe. And there are some champagne and sparkling wine tops that are very hard to extract. That was kind of cool. Next up is called a champagne opener. Now, I've never seen one of these. I don't even know how it works. I had to watch a YouTube video on how to do it. It seems interesting that you're going to use this to open a bottle of sparkling wine safely. You don't even have to unscrew the cage. We don't even have to remove the foil. So you can just look here on the side and you can see where it's braided and twisted. And you can see the loop here. You basically just hook this hook here inside of this loop. And grab a hold, turn over like this, put it on the top like that, squeeze down, and pull up. I don't think I did that right. When it popped, it looks kind of messy and weird, but it looked like it totally exploded through the top here, which could go any... I don't know what kind of look you're looking for, but it could be fun. But I would remove the foil. Some people don't have the strength or full range of motion. You're on the table. You can use the table to brace. Like you say, you don't know you need it until somebody makes it, right? And now you're like, wow, maybe I need that. But I don't think I need it. So next up, we have the Peugeot Reverse Fully Automatic Rechargeable Corkscrew. Wow, that was a mouthful. It actually kind of looks like a pepper grinder, right? It doesn't have any visible movable parts. It doesn't require different motions and all those types of things. So I can see the simplicity of it and why people would enjoy it. You can automate anything in your life. It's supposed to make your life better. So let's go ahead and place this on top of the bottle and press down. One, one thousand, two, one thousand. Not yet. Voila. Like magic. Now I'm gonna pull a rabbit out of a hat. All right, that's cool. But that takes a lot longer. You know, there's something about that, right? Is it for me? No. Could it be for you? Of course, if that's what floats your boat. But it is simple. It is easy. Extracts the cork and actually basically spits it right back out. So this contraption here, I've been told that this is a pat-nat opener. It's a form of sparkling wine. Generally comes in a crown top. I've never seen this before in my life, ever. So I'm curious. Pat-nat at a restaurant, you would just use a bottle opener, right? It has a crown top, like a Mexican Coke, right? You know, like a crown top. And you use the bottle opener and open it. Pat-nat is not really meant to age. This bottle had a different atmosphere per pressure. They don't need a heavy-duty cork in it with a cage or anything like that. So a crown top will suffice. This is a concrete container. You know, so this is like a wine chiller. It has a water-resistant LED light and it fits flush down in the bottom here. So it'll illuminate the bottle so you can watch the bubbles dance. It's kind of like part wine chiller, part hipster lava lamp. And then you slide the top on here. And this is the part that I thought was pretty interesting. Before you decide to enjoy, what you want to do is kind of release some of the gases. These are meant to sometimes re-firm into the bottle. So they have the active yeast in it. So when you open it, it will fizz. We shot one episode. We did a pat-nat from Vermont. Exploded everywhere. Everybody got wet. What you want to do is kind of release some of the gases. You use this screw top here to pierce the crown top. Once you start to do that, you should hear some gases pop out of there. Kind of relieving the pressure. Very slowly. Then it kind of conveniently slides off this way. The bottle opener just attaches to the side here of the base. So you have your opener and then you would just open. Interesting. In my opinion, it's doing too much. It feels like it adds a little bit of pretense to something that's supposed to be somewhat pedestrian and wine for all. But I get it. Does it solve a problem? It kind of does, right? It slowly lets off a lot of the gas so you can keep most of the bubbles. Can you do it in an easier way? Sure. But this looks beautiful. These are all tools made to get what's inside of the bottle out into your glass and to make your life better. They all do the same thing. It just gives me and you a variety. Buy what you like and have fun, most importantly. My mother-in-law's sitting on the sofa and she's talking about her cousin. She goes, oh yeah, Owen said he watched your new video and you're talking about a wine smelling like my wet dog. And it was at that moment that I realized I probably should not talk about my family here.