there was a time when i carried this with me everywhere. because you never know when a wine bottle has to be opened, and a good wine must be opened properly with the proper tools. when i took up my oenology course, the prof demanded all students to have this gear at all times. one student brought the "household" kind boasting it was top of the line. prof almost had a heart attack. no. no! must use "proper" gear. and at the fine dining restaurant of the school where we all had to learn serving techniques properly, this gear was "regulation". surprisingly most of the young guys in class had a hard time using this and they'd sneak up their other kind. one got a fail when he blatantly used the other kind while serving customers. even ex-partner could hardly use this without a lot of swearing and huffing!
of course nowadays most wines in the below $50 range are bottled with fake corks so i 'm no longer able to show off my skills at opening wine bottles. but there's a vintage barolo in my storage waiting for the right company and when that time comes, this gear will be put to use.
Love the way the calendar is shaping up! I guess Jeff and I must have known the right tool and the wrong as this is the kind we have for opening those rare bottles of wine we get every now and then.
I wouldn't use anything else, although I prefer the kind with two notches so that you can extract long corks in two stages without pulling thereby risking a breakage... interestingly, I've always known this type of corkscrew as a Waiters' Friend. I have some Barolo in stock but, sadly, not vintage :-(
