Wine lore says that the cork, which comes from the bark of the cork oak tree, may first have been used to seal wine bottles by the Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon, replacing wooden stoppers in about 1670.
This advance then led to the development of literally dozens of gadgets designed to remove them from bottles.
The corkscrew is just one of numerous wine paraphernalia that have been developed in the last three and a half centuries that purport to make it easier for consumers to enjoy a simple bottle of chardonnay or zinfandel.
All corkscrews work about the same way, but the best are those helix contraptions that are hollow in the middle, all of which are intended to drive through the cork, grabbing it from the inside and allowing the consumer to withdraw the cork. The best are Teflon-coated.
Single-piece flanged corkscrews work for most young wines but can be a disaster for older wines whose natural corks have begun to degrade.
A clever alternative to the helix is the two-pronged invention called the Ah-So, which works by pushing the longer prong down inside between the glass of the bottle and the cork, then putting the other prong into the opposite side of the bottle. When it is rocked back and forth and is all the way seated, touching the cork, a careful twisting motion will remove the cork.
Another gadget that works reasonably well is the pneumatic pump. A sharp needle with a hole in the bottom is inserted all the way through the cork. Then gas or air are injected into the bottle below the cork. The air or gas pushes the cork out of the bottle.
If a cork should fall into the wine bottle, one gadget has been invented to pull it back out, using a thin blade with a hook at the bottom.
Keeping white and rose wine chilled without having to keep them in a refrigerator is done by various means, and several expensive decanters have been invented that may be kept in a freezer. Between the outer and inner walls of the decanter is a liquid that stays below freezing temperature without actually freezing.
The consumer pours the wine into the decanter and the liquid stays quite cold for at least an hour.
Alternatively, and for far less money, plastic ice cubes filled with water may be purchased and kept frozen in a freezer. Two or three of them will keep a glass of wine relatively cold until it is consumed.
Recorking a wine using the original cork is best done using a can of inert gas sprayed into the bottle, such as a product called Private Preserve.
Using the original cork for resealing occasionally isn’t a solution, especially if the cork expands so much that getting it back into the bottle is a chore. Synthetic plugs specifically made for wine bottles are easily found in fine wine stores, as are plastic pouring spouts that have twist closures.
Sparkling wines that still have a few ounces left may be resealed with spring-loaded steel plugs intended to keep the effervescence from dissipating. They run about $10 each. For about half that, small plastic/rubber resealers that expand at the bottom after a lever is depressed work well.
To keep wine bottles horizontal so the cork stays moist and can’t dry out, all kinds of wine racks are available including wooden cubes (such as the 12-inch-by-12-inch ones so widely seen stacked on top of one another).
Elaborate, expensive wine bottle refrigerators or storage cabinets are designed to keep wine bottles at the proper temperature for decades, but they cost a lot and often entail use of electricity. If you have an extra closet, a small wine “cellar” that can be kept cool year-round may well suit most consumers’ needs.
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