Favorite corkscrews

Much like people have a “junk drawer” in their kitchen, we have a “corkscrew drawer.” There are many varieties of corkscrews. Over the years, your Two Wine Nuts have narrowed the field to three favorites, depending on the Nut and the cork. Here are the three we keep on hand:

This is one Nut’s favorite. It is the Pocket Model made by Screwpull. When not in use, it collapses to a handy size perfect for drawer, pocket, backpack, or picnic basket. To use it, you slide the handle part out, put it on top of the screw, place the pronged cover on top of the bottle, and spin the handle around as it pushes the screw into the cork. Screwpull calls it a "self-pulling corkscrew’"and that’s exactly what it is. There’s no muscle required, and the screw goes in straight every time. This corkscrew is also very small and light, making it preferred over the popular "rabbit style" corkscrews which always work but are bulky and often weigh more than the bottle of wine being opened. The downside to this pull is that it is a bit more expensive and does not work well on synthetic corks. The other Nut also dislikes its lack of tradition. You can find the Screwpull Pocket Model in various upper-end kitchen stores like William-Sonoma, or online. Amazon is selling it for $14.95. See Screwpull and Amazon for more info.

This traditional corkscrew is preferred by the other Nut. This is called the Waiter Style corkscrew. It seems all waiters use this style, not sure why. It can be found just about anywhere, including grocery stores, dollar stores, and wineries. Like the Screwpull, this collapsible corkscrew is light and small, very portable and handy. The Nut prefers this screw because it is traditional and effective. It is also the best type for removing stubborn synthetic corks. The other Nut sometimes gets frustrated by this corkscrew because the screw can be inserted incorrectly and end up going in diagonally, often breaking the cork or at least crumbling a small part of it. Practice and using your index finger to guide the screw can help prevent this. This type of corkscrew typically sells for $5-$8.

This final corkscrew is called the Ahh-So corkscrew. The name either comes from it being “ahh-so” easy to use, or more likely, the eventual comment “ahh, so THAT’s how it works!” Like the others, this corkscrew is light, small, and very portable. It seems a little harder to find these days, although kitchen stores, wine stores, and various online sites will have it. It is priced similarly to the Waiter Style. The advantage that this corkscrew has over the others is that it does not have a screw that pierces the cork. Instead, starting with the longer prong, you place the prongs on either side of the cork and wiggle the prongs down between the cork and the bottle. Then you pull and twist the captured cork and it pops right out. This is a good corkscrew to use if you have an old, fragile cork to remove. The downsides to this corkscrew are that it is miserable at removing synthetic corks, and sometimes, when pushed too hard, the prongs can force the cork down into the bottle. When that happens, there are other tools to try to retrieve the cork but we prefer just to leave the cork where it is and pour around it.

A Good Introduction to Whites

As mentioned in a previous post, we recently picked up two bottles of wine while shopping at Target. While we weren’t that jazzed about Folie à Deux’s red version of Ménage à Trois, the California White Table Wine version turned out to be OK.

The first thing we noticed about the white 2005 Folie à Deux Ménage à Trois was its color. It was a very pretty, clear light yellow. It looked a lot like pear juice. The smell was very pleasant, too. It smelled sweet, like apricots and orange blossoms. Before looking at the label, we thought the wine smelled like a Viognier or a Sauvignon Blanc. Actually, the three grapes that comprise this ménage à trois are Chardonnay, Moscato, and Chenin Blanc. The Moscato and Chenin Blanc grapes explain the sweet smell.

Moscato is a grape typically used in light, sweet dessert wines. Moscatos are often just a hint fizzy and frighteningly easy to drink. We’ll review one of our favorite Moscatos as it gets closer to summer. Chenin Blanc wines are also a bit on the sweeter side, although they are not dessert wines. The first wine one of your Wine Nuts started drinking way back when was a Callaway Chenin Blanc. It was just sweet enough to be drinkable for a Wine Nut in the Making. And this white Ménage à Trois shares that characteristic.

Overall, we would describe the taste of this wine as a bit watery, bland, and lacking pizazz. It’s not offensive; there’s just not a lot to it. On the plus side, it is not harsh or acidic or alcohol-y. For this reason, we think this wine would be great for someone who is new to wine. It’s just sweet and easy enough to be enjoyable if most wines make you pucker your lips and say, “Yick.”

We think this wine is a little steep at $10. For $5-$7, we would keep it on hand for guests who aren’t Wine Nuts but want to join in the fun. Like its red brother, this Ménage à Trois can be found at Target and World Market. And it’s a better buy than the red.

Bud Break

An Update from the Winemaker:

A wonderous thing has happened in the "vineyard" this week. We saw the first signs of spring on the vines - the buds have swollen and started to break into real, growing stems. This means some of them made it through the winter alive! Yay!

I haven't taken a census to figure out exactly how many made it, but other than the ones that I already knew to be dead, every vine I've looked at is starting. How wonderful. And, how slightly unexpected given how little growth we got off the vines last year. Here's hoping they make up for it this summer.

A Red that Misses the Target

Last week while we were at Target, we spotted some wine from a winery we used to know. Folie à Deux used to be a fun boutique wine whose winery was a small farm house on a side road in Napa. Now that we can find their wine in Target and World Market for $10, we’re not sure how boutiquey Folie à Deux is any more. Hoping for the best we picked up a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Last night we opened the red version of 2005 Folie à Deux Ménage a Trois. We were disappointed.

“Folie a deux” is French for “a madness shared by two” or “a shared fantasy.” We won’t bother to define “ménage a trois” other than to say in this context it means the wine is a blend of three different grapes. This “California Red Table Wine” is a blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. It sounds promising, doesn’t it?

The look and smell were what we’d expect from of blend of those three grapes. The wine was a deep, rich, purple-red, and it smelled like a nice heavy Cabernet – some berries, some oak, a tiny bit of chocolate or coffee. But the taste was disappointing. It was sweeter than we were expecting, almost like one of those jug wines from long ago. It was also rather light and the taste disappeared very quickly. We expected a lot more flavor and interest from a Zinfandel-Merlot-Cabernet blend, even at $10 a bottle. In our opinion, you can do a lot better for $10 – and probably even for $5-$7.

We still have the white to try. Stay tuned.