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February 06, 2006
World's Best Wine Bottle Stopper
So maybe you don't need this what with the pluck you drink but hey, you never know when your ship will come in and all of sudden there you are all by yourself with an open bottle of Chateau d'Yquem.
You know how sleepy you get after one glass of wine so now what're you gonna do?
Stick a cork in it?
I don't think so.
That's why it's nice to have this overengineered piece of kit from Rösle in your kitchen, just in case.
From the website:
- Tightly reseal opened bottles with a turn on the top loop, pressing the lower silicone ring firmly against the neck.
Made in Germany.
9.3 cm (3.6") L.
Stainless steel.
Hand wash.
$24.95 here.
Full disclosure: one of my readers, I believe Stephen Bové, recommended Rösle's can opener (below)
to me last year when I was on about finding the perfect tool for this task.
He was right: the Rösle is the best I've ever used — and trust me, I've gone through at least a dozen different designs over the years — for easily opening a can and at the same time crimping the sharp metal such that there are no dangerous edges.
$30 here.
Note the hanging ring for storage — no aspect of the device's purpose and overall usefulness was overlooked by Rösle's dedicated, unrelenting and uncompromising designers.
I'll bet you a MacBook Pro that Steve Jobs has Rösle tools in his kitchen.
February 6, 2006 at 09:01 AM | Permalink
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Comments
Oenophiles may wither and die at the mention of a screw top, but wine lovers do not. Yes, there is a difference. Oenophiles chew their wine, faint if a red is served in a white wine glass, and accept the 3-7% of wine that ends up "corked" as the price to pay for tradition. Wine lovers believe life is too short for such nonsense, that the best serving glass for wine is one that holds it until you're ready to drink it, and that screw tops may actually represent the advance, rather than the decline, of human civilization.
Posted by: Richelle | Feb 7, 2006 11:12:19 AM
Crud. I no I got my first wine cork/plug at Fantes, but it's not there now.
Don't see the connection between opening wine and a can opener, but maybe that's just me. But the bottle of Chateau D'Yquem? I'd have drunk that sucker.
Posted by: riannan | Feb 6, 2006 5:04:24 PM
Chateau d'Yquem! Boy does that bring up the memories. (Uh-oh, sad old reminiscing git time.) There was this guy who was just freshly graduated from Emory med school and on his way to study ophthalmology somewhere, and I was just ridiculously impressed by all that, so, before repairing to my place for an assignation with the miscreant, I purchased a bottle of the above named. Vintage 1970. A good one, I was told. Forty dollars. (And this was a looong time ago.) Weelll, he gets to my place, sees the bottle on the counter, asks if I mind if he "decants" it, I says no (probably I said "Why, no! Not at all! Please, help yourself! Make yourself right at home! Eat all the popsicles! Play my flute! Use my toothbrush!") So I step into the next room for a sec and I get back and he's drunk half the bottle out of a paper cup. And he was kind enough to get a paper cup for me, too. And in between belches he says, hey, this stuff is pretty good, where'd you get it?
After I kicked him out, assignation-free, I kept that stupid bottle, which I still have to this day, sitting on my dresser. I had completely forgotten the "story" behind it until now.
I just found out a bit of trivia not related to anything other than sad old git reminiscing -- I went to the exact same high school as Hines Ward, the guy who was some kind of MVP in the Super Bowl yesterday. Except it was about a hundred years before he was ever there. Before it was air-conditioned, even.
Posted by: Flutist | Feb 6, 2006 3:14:54 PM
Actually, the wine industry started to catch on to the screw-cap effect in 2004: http://www.vincorusa.com/media/documents/hogue_screwcap_results.pdf
The benefits of screw caps versus synthetic or natural cork have been the topic of several articles in even the generic foodie magazines: Saveur, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, etc. (And some are pairing the screw caps with smaller bottles - so if you just want two glasses of wine you don't end up wasting the rest of the bottle, as is usually my case.)
And I would agree with Joe more about Steve Jobs' superior design sense if I had not recently received my super-sleek, beautiful, black video iPod with glaringly white iPod headphones. (The very same ones that came with my WHITE iShuffle.) Not acceptable. (Obviously, Steve's Rösle would have a black tip with a white hand crank!) ;)
And I've heard all the arguments about white headphones = iPod, but I'm not buying it. They should be black and silver. Period.(I'm picturing the earbud piece with the same silver on the back of the iPod and the rest black.)
Posted by: Shawn Lea | Feb 6, 2006 11:48:10 AM
Though oenophiles wither and die at the mere mention of rubber stoppers and screw caps, it turns out those declasse devices do a better job of preserving wine than corks do. Maybe in a couple hundred years, after wine culture has gotten over itself, the best wines will come with a screw cap.
Posted by: Al Christensen | Feb 6, 2006 9:20:27 AM
