Corks, screw tops and hurting yourself

My take in the "great" cork vs screw top debate: I love those screw tops.

I collect corks, so I'll miss the corks a bit, but not that much. My reasons why I'm pro screwtop, from least to most significant

1. You get that nice "snap" sound, when the screwtop opens.
   
2. You don't have to worry about the wine getting corked or going bad due to a bad cork,
3. You don't have to remove the foil around the damn cork,
4. You don't have to remember to bring a cork screw, especially if you'll consume the bottle in a remote location.

Speaking about opening wine, in talking to various co-workers and friends, I hear about people hurting themselves when dealing with wine (I'm especially referring to you M.N.) Surprisingly, people seem to hurt themselves in ways you don't expect. Again from least often to most often, based on my limited data collection it seems to be:

1. Broke a glass, typically while washing it, and cut onself.
2. Pinched, squeezed, cut, poked or dorked onself trying to remove the cork. But the number one biggest hurt-yourself-area is
3. Cut onself trying to remove the foil around the cork. In many cases the foil is not easy to remove and creates sharp edges in the process.
   

Foils

In dealing w/ the foil, I don't try to cut the top off, but rather try to remove the whole thing in one piece by twisting the foil off the bottle. I find this to be faster in most cases and much less risky. Of course, some foils are glued on or the bottom of the foil is taped onto the bottle with some paper label, making things more challenging. In these cases, I try to remove enough of the paper, so I can break the seal and remove the entire foil.

If I have to cut the foil, I still try to remove the entire foil. I start near the bottom and try to tear it off in a spiral motion. I stay away from cutting the foil over the cork where you can get sharp jaggies, that you have to poke your fingers into.

At a wine tasting where I was pouring, I was doing the whole-foil-removal and felt a bit out of place as neighboring pourers were cutting the foil just below the top. But then I noticed a grape grower who was pouring the wine made from his/her grapes doing the same thing as I was. So I knew I was fine.

Cork removers

Here are my preferences:

• Waiter's cork screw. An exciting development in the last year is the double hinge on the pivot point, so the cork comes out straight the whole way.
  
• Rabbit ears or the "Screwpull". A mechanically ingenious device in which you clamp the rabbit ears around the bottle, lift the lever removing the cork, remove the device away from the bottle, clamp the rabbit ears around the cork and repeat the motion. The cork drops off the curly metal and you have an open bottle with the cork on the table. If the device is new and mechanically tight and you aren't too much of a wimp, the whole process takes less than 5 seconds.
  
• There are a variety of not-too-often-seen mechanical screws where you turn T-handle that pulls (literally unscrews) the cork out due to a spiral groove somewhere. These typically fit over the cork with some sort of cylinder or cone. They are not terrible small.
  
• That's it.
  
• In particular I hate the winged cork screw opener where you lower levers that start out looking like rabbit ears and lower them next to the neck to remove the cork. They are big, inelegant and I once pinched myself badly using them. I only use them as a last resort now and sneer when doing so.

A few other openers I've seen:

• I got a gift of a long needle which pokes through the cork. You then pump air into the bottle through the needle which creates pressure pushing the cork out. I must have used it wrong the first time, but since then it surprisingly works as advertised. I still don't care for it much as the needle is a nasty looking torture device masquerading as a cork remover.
• I bought a device similar to the waiter's corkscrew but it hinges in the middle so while you teeter, the cork totters. Make sure you teeter down and you're OK. However it is less good than the waiter's device as you have less mechanical advantage so it takes more brute strength. Still I appreciated finding yet another cork removal method.