The Best Corkscrews for Every Bottle and Budget
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Consider the corkscrew. There’s perhaps no device in the world that greater exemplifies the moment of need, the sort of thing you all but forget about until the exact moment it’s called for. Armed with a trusty screw, the world is your vinous oyster, but go lacking a cork puller at the critical juncture, and you’ll find yourself well and truly screwed.
Few things in life run a wider gamut of taste and expense than wine, which is simultaneously an everyday drink for the masses and a rich man’s plaything, the sort of hobby in which one might spend $20 or $20,000 on a 750 ml bottle. So, too, goes the corkscrew, which ranges in price and functionality from the humblest plastic pocket tool to the grandest of titanium alloy sommelier status symbol. There are electric corkscrews the size of a personal massager, grand winged corkscrews that look more like something you’d encounter at the dentist, no-name imports that do a surprisingly good job, and name-brand favorites that shockingly disappoint. Every bottle of wine gets you buzzed, but no two bottles of wine are the same, even from the same producer in the very same year; in the same breath every corkscrew opens a bottle of wine, but no two corkscrews are precisely alike, even if they utilize the same general style and approach. The two entities are forever twinned, like that couple you know who seem to be undeniably made for each other—the cork needs the screw, and vice versa. I find something poetic about it all.
Check out our other drink-related guides, like Best Barware and Best Nonalcoholic Wines.
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What Kind of Corkscrew Should You Buy?
This honestly depends a great deal on the sort of wine you like to drink. For casual wine drinkers, it makes sense to spend as little as possible while seeking a baseline level of functionality. The most basic and traditional style of corkscrew is known as a “waiter’s style” and has been used for the past hundred years or more by hospitality workers worldwide. These corkscrews all have the same basic parts: a hinge at the top; a worm, or spiral, which drills into the cork; and a blade that allows you to cut the foil from the top of the bottle. Open one bottle using this style of screw and you’ll be able to open a thousand.
From there, things get more esoteric. Winged corkscrews use a base-and-lever approach, but they’re considerably larger than the waiter’s style and better suited for home use. A broad range of electric corkscrews harness technology to do the cork-pulling work for you, typically requiring a battery and sometimes even a bulky countertop charging station. Less known is the infinity corkscrew, which uses a simple turn of the wrist to remove a cork. There are also highly specialized corkscrews like the Durand, which is a revelation in the tricky art of removing vintage wine corks, as well as designer and conceptual corkscrews in the hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.
- Photograph: Jordan Michelman\
Best for Most People
Hicoup Wine OpenerAfter a lifetime of using basic waiter’s corkscrews—including a solid chunk of my twenties, whilst employed as a waiter—I’d come to think of them as sort of being all the same. With dozens of devices in this style available, you might naturally reach a similar conclusion, but that would be a mistake. HiCoup, a family-owned kitchenware brand based in Toronto, makes my single favorite waiter’s corkscrew on the market, with the better-known Le Creuset brand corkscrew ($44) as a close runner-up.
With this style of corkscrew you pretty much know what you’re getting yourself into—a simple three-part mechanism employing a hinge, worm, and knife that can be cleanly packed up and into a waiter’s apron (or kitchen junk drawer) between uses. I think it’s fair then to take into account things like how the object feels in your hand and how much it costs. Both the HiCoup and the Le Creuset employ a wire atop the hinge to create a springlike motion as you brace the device, and both use a metal worm, but the Le Creuset’s handle is a silver-coated plastic that feels loose and cheap. The HiCoup, meanwhile, is made entirely of solid metal with a wood handle that has nice grip detailing. Its knife is nice and sharp, whereas the Le Creuset knife was too dull to cleanly cut a label. At just $17, this corkscrew costs less than an entry-level bottle of Bourgogne, compared to the Le Creuset, which runs over twice as much. Better to save money on your objet d’cork and spend it instead on wine.
- Photograph: Jordan Michelman
Best Winged
Beneno Zinc Alloy Wing CorkscrewTo be completely honest with you, I sort of can’t stand these sorts of corkscrews. Not because they’re bad at removing corks—they are great at removing corks—but rather because they inevitably seem to end up stuck in one of my cabinet drawers, so ungainly and oddly shaped are they within the wider world of kitchenwares. Still, the winged style corkscrew has its devotees, and the best of this style is made by Beneno, a brand better known for designing a colorful array of can openers. Many of the winged corkscrews I tested (including those made by Rabbit and Oxo) make prodigious use of plastic throughout the device, but the Beneno winged corkscrew is plated in zinc alloy, which feels cool to the touch and resists wear. It’s the smallest of the winged devices I tested, which makes for unobtrusive storage, and it’s charmingly simple to use: Put it on top of the bottle, twist the top until the wings raise, then press the ears back down to expunge the cork.
I particularly enjoy the level of transparency that Beneno offers for its corkscrew. Included with my Beneno was a year-one refund and three-year replacement warranty, as well as the name and address of the corkscrew’s manufacturer and importer in China. There’s also a “scan for transparency” option and a barcode per Amazon transparency guidelines, plus additional information on UK and EU representatives. It even comes with a Climate Pledge Friendly designation, which really is asking a lot from a little corkscrew, isn’t it? The one place winged corkscrews excel is in removing corks from wax-sealed bottles; this practice is popular among winemakers in France and California and is considered a “messy ego trip” by some. Winged openers make quick work of a wax-seal bottle, and the Beneno performs particularly well in this regard. All in all, there’s quite a lot to recommend at an attractive price point.
- Photograph: Jordan Michelman\
Best Electric
Rabbit Electric Wine OpenerSome wine drinkers adore gadgets, a trend to which the wider industry of wine is pleased to oblige with a bottomless assortment of doodads and whoozy-whatsits. From wine fridges to exotic decanters to highly technical aerators, there exist an endless amount of ways to spend money on wine beyond simply buying bottles. One such rabbit hole is the electric corkscrew. There are dozens, perhaps even a hundred, versions and styles of electric corkscrew, all relying on the same general purpose: to remove cork from glass without expending effort. I took a closer look at three of the most popular offerings, from the brands Brookstone, Cuisinart, and Rabbit, and have concluded without a doubt that the Rabbit is the clear winner in this category.
Now on to the Rabbit, our winner. I really like that this relies on a simple USB charge—everyone has a USB cord lying around, and it means you’d easily be able to find a charge for it at a friend’s house or while traveling. Best of all, no enormous ugly charging base will be left sitting in your kitchen until you inevitably grow tired of it. This opener takes just four hours to charge fully, can pull 30 corks before needing a refresh, and has a one-year warranty.
The Rabbit has some really cool functionality. The device automatically senses when it’s been mounted atop a cork, screws itself in quickly, pops the cork without pressing an additional button, and then ejects the cork without requiring any extra commands. It worked every time I tried it, from the first to the last, and it’s whisper-quiet. The Rabbit is user-error-proof, easy to store and charge, sleek, and yes, even stylish. I came into this testing ready to roll my eyes at the existence of electric corkscrew openers, and now I’ve found myself looking forward to actively using the Rabbit Electric at home for fun.
- Photograph: Jordan Michelman
Best Infinity
Peugeot InfinitySomething of an oddity is this lesser-known style of corkscrew, patented by Peugeot Saveurs, an offshoot of the famed French automobile maker Peugeot. The firm makes a wide range of bottle openers (and also pepper grinders, cutlery, and so forth), but it's this “infinity” corkscrew that’s worth a closer look. It’s almost like the manual version of an electric opener, requiring very minimal effort from the user to remove a cork. One simply places the device over the top of a bottle, turns the screw clockwise to pluck the cork, then turns the screw counterclockwise to remove it. The Infinity creates a sort of airlock-like seal around the bottle and the cork, allowing for simple and easy removal.
I already owned one of these prior to diving into product testing and went back to it almost on a lark, toward the end of all my cork pulling. This is a device I’ve used in my own kitchen for several years, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it really stood out next to all the other devices tested for this story. It’s a nice option if you want something a little more advanced than a basic corkscrew but don’t want to spend time and money on an electric version.
- Photograph: Jordan Michelman
Best Design
Craighill Best Wine KeyCorkscrews do form and function pretty well, but in the right hands they can also be statement pieces. That’s what you have here from considered design makers Craighill, who collaborated with multi-hyphenate sommelier-winemaker-author-entrepreneur Andre Hueston Mack to design a truly unique and attention-getting derivation on the classic waiter’s friend corkscrew design.
It is, first and foremost, a beautiful object, clad in stainless steel and satisfyingly textured PPE plastic and housed in a designer box. Craighill’s wine key uses a unique stepped interior joint system in place of the classic waiter’s friend hinge; it takes some doing to get used to, but operations are spelled out helpfully in an instructional YouTube video, a QR code for which is included inside the box. After one or two tries you get used to it, and the wine key becomes great tactile fun to use, satisfyingly haptic and intuitive after repeated use. The Craighill also comes armed with a best-in-category wine key knife, which extends out at a 90-degree angle from the top of the opener. It is ripping sharp and is hooked in such a way that it naturally supports the angled slicing of wine foil. The whole thing just feels modern and cool, which is important enough, but it’s also functional—you could easily slide this in the proverbial waiter’s pocket—and better still, a conversation starter. If the sommelier at my restaurant whipped one of these things out, I’d need to ask their opinion on it immediately.
- Photograph: Jordan Michelman
Best for Vintage Wine Bottles
The DurandNot all wine is meant to age; indeed, the vast majority of bottles should be consumed within a year or two of being corked. But wine that can age—including but certainly not limited to the fine wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux, Piedmont, Napa, and the Willamette Valley—achieve a kind of cosmic quantum complexity across the years and decades, revealing new layers of flavor and texture. This is owed to the slow creep of oxygen that makes its way into the wine via the cork. But this same exchange can also slowly damage the cork, rendering it dry and crumbly, moist and sticky, or otherwise difficult to remove.
In the late aughts an octogenarian inventor named Mark Taylor set out to conquer the quarrel of vintage corks once and for all. His finished product was patented as the Durand, named in tribute to influential Atlanta restaurateur Yves Durand. (Read here for more on the history of the Durand.) It is a marvel of ingenious engineering, neatly fusing together the standard pigtail worm found on any corkscrew with the two-pronged ah-so, before that time the best specialized way to remove aged and damaged corks. Together they form a sort of double helix in the vinous sky, allowing users to simultaneously screw and pluck a tricky cork in the same swift motion. It is a damn marvel, the Durand. No cork too damaged, no bottle too expensive, no situation too important to be bested by it. Once I opened a bottle of 1970s Barolo table-side at Gene & Georgetti, the iconic Chicago Italian steakhouse, in full view of the restaurant waitstaff, onlooking fellow guests, and my two older brothers. A more high-pressure wine moment I’ve never known, but the Durand performed flawlessly, and our Italian red sang in tribute. For vintage corks, old bottles, and wines of history, the Durand is your best friend.
- Photograph: Jordan Michelman\
Best Deluxe
Code38 P-Type Pro SommThe Code38 is a deluxe modular corkscrew hailing from Australia, cultishly revered and made from materials that include stainless steel and aerospace-grade titanium. Models start at $395 and range up to $1,295, and have become status symbols nonpareil among graduating WSET sommeliers and fancy Instagram wine geeks.
Milled in a solar-powered workshop in Cullendore, New South Wales, the Code38 P-Type starts life as a solid stainless steel bar. It comes equipped with a conical tapered helix, also in hardened stainless steel (it can be upgraded to titanium), as well as a stainless steel blade. The whole thing weighs just 110 grams and feels almost weightless in the hand; the titanium version is even lighter, down to 75 grams. Every component on the Code38 can be unscrewed for easy cleaning or swapping of parts. So … is it worth it? Like with any luxury object, value is in the eye of the beholder. The vast majority of Code38 corkscrews are in the hands of sommeliers, people opening tens of thousands of dollars worth of wine a night as part of their professional remit. The option to get your Code38 engraved at the factory is a nice touch and has made these a go-to gift option in the rarefied world of high-end sommeliers. A more casual user might never need to break down and clean their corkscrew, or wouldn’t necessarily benefit from the lightweight utility of an object like this. And even a committed wine lover might quickly do the math on the Code38 and conclude their $400 would be better spent on, say, a really nice bottle of 1er Cru Burgundy.
But oh, does this offer a satisfying wine opening experience, seamless and clean and pleasurably tactile. The included stainless steel helix is all you’ll ever need, but I was able to try out the upgraded titanium helix as well, and it cuts through a cork like a knife through warm butter. The knife is easily accessible, immediately sharp and effortless to use. Every centimeter of this object has been considered and obsessed over from a design standpoint, and it shows in the finished product. There is a certain type of person who might be attracted to the individual design narrative of this corkscrew, or a serious collector who looks at it as a worthwhile investment to deepen their enjoyment. The ability to break down the corkscrew into individual pieces is intuitive and satisfying. I think there’s a chance stuff like this makes whatever you’re drinking taste better, simply because you used a special object to get that bottle open in the first place. And they have become like a sort of shibboleth for people in the wine business—if you see the sommelier at a nice restaurant using one, chances are you’re in very good hands. Like buying a Mike Lull bass instead of a Fender, or using a Linn Audio turntable instead of a Technics, or wearing an Audemars Piguet instead of a Swatch, it’s worth it if you care enough to get what makes the object special in the first place (and can afford the pleasure). Whatever you do, dear heavens, don’t forget to pop this corkscrew in your checked bag before flying; it would be a sin to lose your Code38 to airport security.
Photograph: AmazonNot Recommended
Leave these in your cartCuisinart Electric Wine Opener for $30: The Cuisinart requires a large charging station, which looks more or less identical to the one you’ve mounted your electric toothbrush in. It’s really quite a commitment to your kitchen countertop, and it takes 12 whole hours to charge the device fully.
Brookstone Electric Wine Opener for $25: The Brookstone is the smallest of the electric corkscrews I tried, and also by far the loudest, rendering a buzz-buzz-buzz that would prove quite annoying in a candlelit dinner situation. It also required some additional doing in order to actually remove the cork; one does not simply press a button with the Brookstone but must squeeze, and then twist the opener to remove the foil in the first place, which is annoying.
Oster Electric Wine Opener for $25: The Oster was slow, noticeably slower, and more cumbersome than every other unit I tried. The machine struggled to remove corks and I had to retest multiple times to get it to work. After the third or fourth failure, I exiled it to the dustbin of electric wine bottle opener history.
Secura Electric Wine Opener for $30: I purchased the silver model with a blue accent. Its glowing helix chamber seems cool in pictures but looks like an old-timey barber's blue liquid Barbicide jar full of combs IRL. The first cork I pulled with it worked fine, but the second cork split in half. The third cork came out mangled, and there was cork residue that dropped into the bottle—this can happen with older corks, but it was a contemporary bottle I used. I found the aesthetics unappealing and coupled with the cork damage, I can't recommend it.
Cokunst Electric Wine Opener for $10: I liked the aesthetic here and I liked that it was only $10, but … it feels cheap in your hand. Another “much cooler looking on Amazon than IRL” opener. The real issue here, which many other users complain about online, is that the opener seems to stall out halfway through the cork removal process. Sure enough, the first three bottles I tested all did the same thing—removed a cork halfway, which makes for an awkward moment. Do I ... try again with the Cokunst? Do I attempt to manually remove the cork with my hands? Do I ... go and grab an actual fucking working corkscrew from another product category and finish the job? One might reasonably surmise that such a quandary should not befall the user of an electronic corkscrew. It's supposed to make the job of opening bottles easier and less annoying. This one failed on both counts.
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How We Tested
Corkscrew methodologyI tried dozens of wine openers for this story (30 in total), particularly in the highly competitive electric, winged, and basic waiter’s corkscrew categories. Each screw was put through its paces, opening two bottles each to help narrow down the field. From there our final winners opened four bottles each, all using standard cork wine bottles in a combination of foil and wax enclosures. Two of the featured openers—the Durand and the Peugeot—came from my personal collection and have been put through their paces over the years long before the research process for this story. My editors think it’s worth mentioning that wine is a topic I’ve written on extensively for other publications, including Bon Appetit, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Punch, Taste, Portland Monthly, the national edition of Eater, and the influential London wine magazine Noble Rot.
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