Durand the “best corkscrew to remove old and fragile corks in vintage wine bottles”

Wine collectors know all too well the challenge of removing old and crumbly corks in aging fine wine bottles. Even with the best corkscrews, it is never easy to completely remove the corks in one piece. This calls for a better corkscrew and the Durand takes up the challenge.

The Durand is a full patented corkscrew designed to remove old and fragile corks from prized vintage wines. It has been tested by wine lovers and sommeliers and The Durand extracted fragile corks. Easily removing them in one piece intact.

I thought you might be interested in a recent experience.   I have now broken my personal best record for the Durand, the previous record being a 1923 Pommard.  The Durand has now, in a perfectly elegant and thorough manner, extracted a totally emaciated and crumbly cork out of a bottle of 1922 Usaneaux Romanee St. Vivant.  The cork was in such bad shape that, as I was gently and slowly pulling it out with the Durand, it suddenly “flew” out of the bottle and I was surprised that it remained intact.  There was not one single cork fragment left behind and the wine was superb, amazingly powerful, intense, sweet and spicy with an amazingly long finish.  Without the Durand, we would probably have gotten the same experience, but only after 20 minutes of trying to fish many cork fragments out of the wine which would have seriously compromised the pleasure!

Hope you are doing well down here because I use my Durand all the time and it has been a wonderful tool.

Best regards,

Dr. Glenn Tong FAICD
Director and Principal
BiotechSmarts Pty. Ltd.

I found the Durand easy to use, with the worm perfectly created in terms of the width and length, not to mention the Teflon coating, all of which helps to maximize the potential for raising the cork without ripping through the center, like many corkscrews will do with older, delicate corks.  The length of Bordeaux and Port corks is easily handled by the Durand, which is not typically the case with most hand held devices.

I did not have a single cork break or crumble while using this tool and would highly recommend this to any serious wine collector who is looking for a fool-proof device for removing even the most stubborn corks.  Old vintage Port corks came out the first time, whole and without crumbling thanks to the double-duty corkscrew and Ah-So features working in tandem making this such a unique and welcome new product.

The only issue I had in using the Durand was when finding a very snug cork, it was difficult to pull both the stabilizer bar and handle simultaneously, at least initially.  Otherwise, this is a well-crafted and extremely solid product that will delight those who know the drudgery from having waged battle while removing the most obstinate or ancient corks.

Roy Hersh
Founder
www.fortheloveofport.com

I have never liked or had any success using a twin prong cork pull …… until I used the Durand. My 65th birthday was November 23rd. My children came to town to celebrate with us. I was opening a ’61 Cantemerle, but the cork began to crumble. I then took out the Durand and removed the cork without further problem. We finished, appropriately with a ’45 Croft port. The 65 year old cork gave us no problem with our Durand. A brilliant piece of design and engineering. Many thanks.

Stuart

Also, used it on a 1974 Phelps California Cab last week and it saved the day as well as the bottle.

Anyway, tonight I have a Port & Douro wine proprietor coming to dinner at my home. I’ve never met her before or been to the property, yet she reached out and I am thrilled to be able to open some great bottles and spend some serious time in the kitchen later in the day.

I was just in the cellar lining up the bottles to pair with the different courses, a fairly easy exercise, none of which will be from her property as I don’t do that, although I will open wine from some of her friendly competitors.

I then chose the Port I wanted to share at the end of our evening and for a good reason (her first time here). It is a bottle of 1970 Taylor Vintage Port. It was bottled in Oporto, not a UK bottling. I’ve owned this batch for 23-25 years now, having bought it several years after starting my collection when I was 25. There’s a heavy black waxed capsule and a few whacks with the back of an Ah-So and it was off and I cleaned up the mess and felt with something this young, an Ah-So would be good enough (Monopol).

The top of the cork was clearly “spongy” but not really wet, but some moisture was held within it. As I carefully applied the longer of the two tines I was concerned, but when the second one went in about 1/4″ and now both were in, I began to rock it gently back and forth, as I am quite adept with this tool having used several of them for ages.

Almost immediately the cork started to move downwards and it was 100% clear to me that if I continued, this cork was heading into the Port at some point. It had only slid down about 1/4″ or so and I gently removed the Ah-So and went to my office and retrieved The Durand.

I slowly screwed in the worm and as it “caught” and the metal met the top of the bottle, it formed a very secure bridge and actually brought the cork back up to the top level of the aperture of the bottle. Bravo.

It held the cork firmly in place and prevented it from slipping in. Time for part II. I then took the Ah-So that it comes with, and inserted it gently and rocked it until it was fully on either side the length of the cork and resting atop of the corkscrew piece. Slowly and gently twisting it out I could feel how soft this cork really was and noticed it had fractured about 1/3 of an inch from the bottom.

I could also feel the entire cork was really spongy and damp throughout. I could see pieces around the fracture crumbling but I was able to wrap my fingers around it to prevent any from falling into the bottle, although a few tiny pieces stuck to the inside of the upper neck of the bottle.

I had removed the entire cork successfully and knew this: with an Ah-So, the cork would have been swimming in the top of the VP. With a corkscrew, it would have broken and certainly pieces that were crumbling, would have wound up in my Port.

The Durand, not a speck of cork touched the wine. I love this device!

The bottle is now resting in my cellar and when I wake up, I will decant it a few hours later about 11 a.m. – noon for a 9-10 p.m. drink with my guests. I can’t wait!

Roy Hersh

A friend of mine brought this wine tool to lunch one day this month when we were going to be opening several farily old bottles of wine, and I have been trying to track down a source for it ever since.

Well, here it is:
http://thedurand.com/
It combines the best qualities of a waiter’s tool with those of an ah-so.
It is knind of expensive, but it is the best I have ever seen, especially for removing the cork from older wines.

Hoyt Hill
Village Wines
Middle Tennessee’s most environmentally friendly wine merchant
615-383-2102

The Durand combines two very tried and proven technologies.
While it will work on any cork, it is nearly essential for older
corks in prized bottles.

Supposedly the average “life span” of a cork is about 25 years.
(Sweet wines can shorten this to less than 20 years.) If you
have a fine wine from a vintage prior to 1985 you need to own a
Durand – or run the risk of a crumbling or broken cork. The older
the wine, the higher the risk.