Let's All Do the Corkscrew Two-Step

Le Creuset Waiter's Friend Corkscrew

Some time ago, one bottle of bubbly flummoxed every corkscrew in the house. It had a a muffin-top like a champagne bottle, but too small to “thumb” it out. The lady of the house liked the stuff enough to buy more, but mentioned the problem to a liquor-store clerk who claimed to have just the solution. He sold her a corkscrew he claimed would "open any wine bottle." He was pretty much right: the Le Creuset Waiter’s Friend may well be the king of all corkscrews.

Le Creuset's version modifies a typical folding waiter's corkscrew: you know, the kind that levers the cork out by propping a folding arm on the lip of the bottle. Their modification is a corkscrew with a "two-step" function: the levered arm has two positions based on a spring-loaded catch. You use position one to start the extraction, while position two finishes pulling the cork.