![]() ![]() Aldo Sohm, the sommelier at Le Bernardin in New York, designed a personalized Laguiole with an Austrian flag design, which also sells for $220. Its waiter’s friends are lovely designs in an older, more ornate style than the minimalist Code-38. Laguiole, a French cutlery brand, has been renowned for its corkscrews for more than a century. It’s not that the world of cork extractors has lacked high-end devices, or even expensive waiter’s friends. He said he plans to buy 10 or so to offer to top clients. As a sommelier, I would actually wear wine keys out.” You could use it really quickly, and it’s very durable. “It was superb to be able to extend the knife with just one hand. Wine Imports and a former sommelier in Ann Arbor, Mich., read about the Code-38 on an Internet chat board and was so intrigued that he wrote to the designer, Jeffrey Toering, who sent him one to try. Not all professionals were as unappreciative. He added that he was quite happy with his waiter’s friend, a French model, the Cartailler-Deluc, which sells for under $30. It’s like reinventing something that’s already perfect.” Instead, the double-hinge allows you to pull a cork part way out, and then re-set the fulcrum to complete the maneuver. The double-hinge is intended as a safety net for amateurs like me, who can’t always get the corkscrew in the right spot for a smooth, continuous extraction. It’s a single-hinge design rather than the double-hinge I have on my Pulltap’s. The foil blade is a curved steel arc that can be opened with one hand and resharpened on a stone. The basic $220 model, which I bought and tested for several weeks, is made of solid stainless steel, with a thick, strong worm. It feels good in the hand, like a well-balanced kitchen knife, and it inspires a sort of confidence that I had been unaware of lacking. The Code-38, by contrast, offers the satisfying, solid heft of a fine tool. When it breaks, I have others lined up ready to go. It works fine, but I confess I don’t feel much of anything about it. ![]() Well, when I pick up my standby home corkscrew, a Pulltap’s double-hinged waiter’s friend, I’m not wowed by the black plastic handle, flimsy metal fulcrum and serrated foil cutter. Enter the Code-38, in which the waiter’s friend is re-engineered, using the highest principles of design and top-flight materials. No product, though, no matter how successful, is immune to the fertile imagination of industrial designers. Essentially a knifelike handle with a spiral worm for inserting into the cork and a hinged fulcrum for resistance, the waiter’s friend has largely stood the test of time, with modest tweaks and improvements, since it was patented in Germany in 1882. In restaurants the world over, sommeliers, those exacting, extracting professionals, rely overwhelmingly on a simple, handy device known as the waiter’s friend or, sometimes, as the wine key. ![]() Ambitious types can find battery-operated corkscrews or tapered yet cumbersome models the size of restaurant pepper mills, which operate not on the principle of twisting the worm into the cork, but with a press and a pull. They’re perfectly content with the gimme corkscrew from the local wine shop or the cheap double-winged corkscrew, in which you squeeze the arms together to extract the cork or even the Swiss army knife. The fact is most people pay corkscrews little mind. Oh, please, why even ask? In an era when people pay hundreds of dollars for a bottle of mediocre Champagne, not to mention thousands for a bottle at auction, who would begrudge the Code-38 wine knife from Australia its retail price of $220 to $410? No, it’s not made of gold. I’m talking, of course, about corkscrews, which, regardless of the screw cap, remain indispensable for achieving access to the wine within. ![]() Call a Boy Scout! He’s sure to be prepared with a handy multifunction pocket knife that includes one. Wine lovers take them for granted, except when nobody can find one. Most often, they can be found stuffed into kitchen drawers alongside potato mashers, melon ballers and other seldom-used essentials of the kitchen. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |