Wine Glassware and Corkscrews Are Simpler Than You Think
Everything you need to know about the two most asked-about wine paraphernalia
Happy Sunday, Sauciers.
I’m away this week (half vacation, half research trip) in my old home of Logroño, La Rioja, Spain. This is one of the world's food capitals, famous for its pincho (tapas) crawls. Because of that, I’ve got no recipe for you this week but I’ll make up for it next week. Logroño is hella inspiring for food.
Instead, we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of the two items of wine paraphernalia I get asked about the most. Wine glasses and corkscrews.
Hint: both are easier than you think.
Every time I talk about corkscrews in my articles, people talk.
Readers take to the comments section and discuss everything spirally. Hollow helixes vs. solid. Winged corkscrews vs. waiter’s friends.
And if TokTik is anything to go by, many people are extremely concerned with glassware. If a Somm has put out a video about glassware, it’s consistently their most-watched clip.
As someone who has opened and poured thousands of bottles of wine into scores of different types of glassware, I want to weigh in.
This is my honest opinion about corkscrews and glassware and it goes like this:
There is only one corkscrew and one type of wine glass you will ever need.
The only corkscrew you’ll ever need
The double reach. AKA Waiter’s Friend. They look like this:
The reason they’re so good — and why you’ll see every single wine pro using them — is they make minimal mess with minimal fuss.
There’s a reason why they’re called a Waiter’s Friend.
They are so common in the wine industry that companies often give them away. My favourite one — the one sat in my drawer right now — was gifted to me by a Spanish wine board.
In other words, they don’t have to — in fact, shouldn’t — be expensive.
But they do need this:
A sharp foil cutter so you don’t cut your hand like I recently did on a friend’s substandard corkscrew.
A thin, strong helix with a sharp end so you can point and screw with precision.
A reassuringly sturdy body which doesn’t threaten to bend and snap at the first sign of stress.
The only time Waiter’s Friends are not your friend is when you’re dealing with decades-old wine with a crumbling cork. And I suspect few of you are drinking these on the regular.
99.999% of the time, the Waiter’s Friend is perfect.
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Hellish corkscrews make for a hellish time
Like these:
The winged fancy
Often found in $1 stores made from the flimsiest plastic known to man, all these do is fuck up the cork and require a ton of pulling because of a too-short helix.
The hernia-giver
Just ask my dad about what happened when he used one of these:
The Automator
Automatic corkscrews are great if you have mobility issues/arthritis etc. If not, no one needs another expensive wine toy when a $5 Waiter’s Friend does the same thing.
And finally…the Coravin
The Coravin is a gadget which inserts a needle into the cork, extracts wine and injects argon gas to help preserve the wine. The needle is so fine, the cork re-seals itself.
The Coravin was great for my wine bar, when I wanted many wines by the glass (although don’t believe the hype about the longevity of keeping Coravin’d wine. It’s less time than you think).
But it’s a lot of money. The cost of the gas is high. You would have to throw a lot of wine down the drain to make it worth it.
The only glass you’ll ever need…
…isn’t a specific glass at all, but a shape.
One that looks like this:
Medium-sized, an angle to the bowl, tapered at the top with enough room to get a swirl on.
They don’t have to cost a fortune, I’ve picked up glasses like these on my travels for less than $2. If you want to invest in quality, the best ones are around $20 or $30 from Austrian and German glass companies like Zalto, Gabriel, Riedel, Spiegelau and Schott Zwiesel.
The worst sort of glasses are those bistro-style ones you see in French or Italian restaurants. Something like this:
Controversially (outside of the wine trade at least) I also hate oversized glasses. The general wisdom may be to stick your big red wines into big glasses. Those glasses are designed to release aromas, but big red wines already have that in spades.
And the bigger the glass, the more you’ll smell the volatile compounds of wine, like alcohol.
Bad glasses will make all wine taste like a Two-Buck Chuck. But a good glass can actually improve a mediocre wine. Sure, it will not turn a $15 liquor store Cabernet Sauvignon into Screaming Eagle, but it will give it a fighting chance to show off the best of itself.
Wine glasses make all the difference because they manipulate the wine’s aroma and flavour compounds. Buy the right ones and you’re instantly going to have a better wine time.
As for the rest of the wine gadgets…
Aerators
Want to aerate your wine? Pour out a small glass, re-cork and shake the bottle.
You don’t need some gadget. You just need air and ideally time.
$200 decanters
I was once gifted a $400 decanter by a fancy company that I NEVER used because it was truly ridiculous both in shape and size.
If you want a decanter (and they can be super useful), you don’t need much. My favourite was a small $20 glass jug small enough to fit in the fridge.
Either that or do what I’ve seen one of the most respected winemakers in the world do and use a sieve over a plastic jug, not dissimilar to this:
The ugly truth about sulfite removers
These gadgets only remove the free sulphites in a wine, when plenty of sulphites are also bound and thus cannot be removed.
If you’re concerned about sulfites, buy no added sulfite or natural wines. They are naturally lower in sulfites and are often made by small producers so you can chalk up points on your karmic scoreboard whilst enjoying great wine at the same time.
Air removal wine stoppers
You might have seen these, little plastic wine stoppers with a small hand pump used to remove the air from the wine.
Whilst these can be useful, I’ve never found they keep wine in much better than storing open bottles in the fridge. We’re talking both white and red.
Glassware, corkscrews and other wine gadget talk is really distracting from the very thing they’re designed to enhance.
Wine.
Keep it simple. Buy some tapered wine glasses. Buy a Waiter’s Friend corkscrew. Spend $50 — or less — and you can forget about the rest of it.
By my reckoning, I’ve just saved you about $400 on decanters, glassware and fancy corkscrews. That’s a lot of wine you could buy instead.
I’ll leave you in the hands of Shitty Wine Memes who says it better than I ever could:
Truth.
great piece as always... although I can't lie, I love what my single expensive Riedel glass with the big bowl and tulip shaped outer lip does to Burgundy. 😎
Yes I have almost no use of my right hand and arm and work in wine- HA! Thankfully not in service, automatic openers and coravin are my lifeline and rabbits I can use if I have absolutely not used my arm that day- otherwise my partner is my opener! But prior to this the waiter’s friend is all I ever used!