Introduction

Comparing wine openers and corkscrews

When it comes to testing corkscrews and wine openers, three review sources do the best work. Recognizing that pretty much any model can remove a cork, editors instead focus on ease of use and efficiency. Good Housekeeping has the most comprehensive coverage, testing 24 corkscrews from budget brands to "ultimate investments." Cook's Illustrated magazine tests 13 lever wine openers in one report and briefly looks at electric wine openers in a more recent article. Choice magazine, an Australian review publication similar to ConsumerReports.org, tests 16 budget corkscrews and wine-bottle openers. ConsumerReports.org reviews 19 wine openers, and though the magazine has some great information on the different types, details on the best wine openers are sparse. Moreover, this article hasn't been updated in four years.

Although it's hard to find much of a consensus on the best wine openers and corkscrews, we compared results at these professional review websites with owner reviews posted at Amazon.com, Epinions.com and other sites. While many of the individual write-ups are insightful, we also noticed a fair bit of fluff on these sites -- some reviews are so uniform that they appear to have been planted. The better owner-written wine-opener ratings are balanced, citing pros as well as cons, with comparisons to other wine-bottle openers.