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By JULIE ROBINSON ROBARDS, Collection Reflections
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Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized," writes Andre Simon in "Commonsense of Wine."
In his autobiography "Harvests of Joy," Robert Mondavi offers: "Wine is art. It's culture. It's the essence of civilization and the art of living."
Indeed, wine is passion, for we celebrate love and romance with it — and it symbolizes warmth of heart and generosity of spirit, especially when we enjoy it with family and friends. The art of living is most certainly enhanced because of the art and culture of wine.
For wine collectors, (oenophiles), it's not just the enjoyment of accumulating a cellar full of bottles, but liquidating their assets in a glass — and preferably the proper kind of glass! To fully embrace the art of wine, there are a myriad accoutrements that enhance the enjoyment of serving and drinking it.
Often oenophiles have beautiful collections of decanters and glassware for serving different types of wine, special funnels for filtering and decanting, tasting cups, coasters to protect linens ... The list goes on to include everything from wine art to bottle labels and corks. Corkscrews are one of the easiest things to collect because they have been around for hundreds of years and there are a great many styles to chose from. While antique corkscrews can run the oenophile hundreds — and even thousands — of dollars, modern corkscrews are quite affordable.
Building a collection of corkscrews begins with understanding their purpose and the many styles that are available. Straight or direct-pull corkscrews are generally T-shaped and consist of a simple screw — also called a helix or worm — and a handle for grasping. Loop and folding handles are slight variations of the direct-pull design. To uncork a bottle, one must twist the helix into the center of the cork and pull — but it takes muscle. A variation of the direct-pull corkscrew is the assisted pull. This is a T-shaped tool that has a button or bell attached to the helix that fits over the lip of the bottle.
Lever corkscrews are the easiest types to use because they use the principle of leverage to extract a cork. The popular waiter's corkscrew, also called a wine key, folds like a jackknife. It has a small knife blade on one end to cut the capsule foil that protects the cork. The helix opens from the center, and there is a hinged bar on the opposite end that rests against the lip of the bottle to create leverage. Waiter's corkscrews are often collected for the advertising that can be found on them — there are literally hundreds of thousands of examples available for only a few dollars each.
Compound-lever corkscrews are much fancier than waiter's corkscrews. These are often called wing corkscrews because they have arms that raise up when the helix is screwed into the center of a cork. Wing corkscrews have a rack and pinion that connect the levers to the framework. The frame fits against the bottle neck, and as the screw is inserted, the levers raise. Pressing down the levers extracts the cork in a smooth, easy fashion.
There are two styles of torque corkscrews — single and double action. Both consist of a T-shaped corkscrew with a loosely attached cylindrical frame that fits over the neck of the bottle. Single-action torque screws require continual turning of the handle in one direction to remove the cork. Double-action torque corkscrews have a second handle — or toggle — that is turned in the opposite direction once the helix is inserted into the cork. The modern screwpull is a fine example of a single-action torque corkscrew.
Concertina, spring-assist, figural and novelty corkscrews are just a few of the many specialty sub-categories of this interesting area of collecting. Who knew getting into a bottle of wine could be so much fun!
Collector Tip: A butler's friend, also called a twin-prong cork puller, doesn't have a helix but rather two flat metal prongs that are inserted between the cork and bottle neck. A twist of the wrist while pulling extracts the cork. While technically it is not a corkscrew, it does have a special place in the collecting field.
Julie Robinson Robards is a member of the Chevalier du Tastevin Burgundian Wine Society and editor of the L'Ordine Della Vite Italian Wine Society Newsletter. She and her husband, Terry Robards, are passionate oenophiles.
Contact her at her Web site
celluloidforever.com.
