& Foil Cutters
Here's to the corkscrew - a useful key to unlock the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front door of fellowship, and the gate of pleasant folly.
- W.E.P. French (From the wine list of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, Louisiana)
There are three types of corkscrews on the market that are worth having – the screw pull (also called the rabbit), the Ah So corkscrew, and the waiter’s corkscrew.
The Ah So corkscrew is useful when you have a cork that is very old or crumbling. It is a 2-pronged device that you slip down along the side of the cork and the inside of the bottle. Then use a slow turning and pulling motion to remove the stubborn cork.
The waiter’s corkscrew is the most popular one that you see in restaurants. It has a foil cutter to remove the capsule as well as the long spiral to screw into the cork. It has a leveraged handle that is applied against the lip of the bottle and gently pulled to remove the cork.
Buy only these three, learn to use them, and leave the others in the storage tray in the garage. A good corkscrew will have a minimum of five full twists in the screw. A very interesting piece of wine trivia is that, as of 2004, 80% of American households did not own a corkscrew.
Their reluctance (or refusal) to purchase a corkscrew may be timely since wineries worldwide are making the change over to screw-cap closures. And we are seeing more “chateau cardboard” wines – wines packaged in a box with spigots. Eventually there will be no need for a corkscrew.
Foil cutters come in many shapes and sizes, but their function is the same – to cleanly cut the foil covering (capsule) on a bottle of wine so it can be poured easily and cleanly into a glass.
Serving Temperatures for Wines
“A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there is no meeting of minds.”
- Chinese proverb
Wine is alive. It has a complex chemistry that changes with temperature and environment. It is important to store it properly and serve it at the correct temperature because the temperature at which a wine is served has an immense impact on its taste. Serving wine cool will mask some imperfections—good for young or cheap wine—while a warmer wine temperature allows expression of the wine's characteristics—best with an older or more expensive wine.
A bottle of wine will cool 2 °C (4 °F) for every ten minutes in the refrigerator, and will warm at about this same rate when removed from the refrigerator and left at room temperature—the temperature of the room will affect the speed with which the wine warms up. A temperature probe inserted through the cork of a bottle of wine placed in a refrigerator was recorded to take 2 hours and 45 minutes for the wine to reach 55 degrees from room temperature. If you need to chill a bottle of wine in a hurry, 35 minutes in the freezer will do the trick. Better yet is to place the wine bottle in a bucket of ice and fill it with water. Your wine will be chilled in 15 minutes. Here is a basic serving temperature guideline for various wines:
| Type Of Wine | Fahrenheit | Celsius |
| Sparkling | 42° to 54° | 6° to 10° |
| Rosé | 48° to 54° | 9° to 12° |
| White | 48° to 58° | 9° to 14° |
| Sherry (Light) | 48° to 58° | 9° to 14° |
| Red | 57° to 68° | 13° to 20° |
| Fortified (Port) | 57° to 68° | 13° to 20° |
| Sherry (Dark) | 57° to 68° | 13° to 20° |
Temperature levels can camouflage defects in certain wines and heighten subtle taste experiences in others. A simple rule of thumb for cooling a wine is to watch the clock when you chill a wine. It takes about 10 minutes for a wine to drop 4°F (2°C) in the average refrigerator and the opposite to occur at room temperature.
Wine Glasses for all Occasions
“The fruits of all our labors have left us as we started.
To grow without is not to grow within.”
- Dave Winer
The shape of a wine glass can impact the taste of the wine, and for this reason different types of wine are served in different glasses.
The three main types of wine glasses are:
A - Red wine glasses: more rounded and have a larger bowl (fill 1/3 full)
B - White wine glasses: tulip shaped (fill 1/2 full)
C - Sparkling wine flutes: tall and thin (fill 3/4 full)
D – Water glass: (fill 3/4 full)
A suitable all-purpose wine glass should hold 10 oz, be transparent to allow the taster to examine the color of the wine and its body, and have a slight curve in at the top to hold in the bouquet. While an all-purpose wine glass is fine for serving a red wine, do not serve a white wine in a red wine glass. The finest wine glasses have paper-thin rims. Names of the finer wine glass manufacturers include Riedel, Schott-Zwiesel, Ravenscroft, Spiegelau and Rosenthal.
Wine glasses are crucial to the overall appreciation of a wine, and work in tandem with temperature. Complex aromas and tastes of a red wine are more easily distinguished when drinking from a glass with a paper thin rim.
At the end of the day, the shape of a glass plays a decisive role in the appraisal and enjoyment of a good wine.
Holding a Wine Glass
“If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night.”
- D.H. Lawrence,
