So I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but how freaking awesome is The Durand!?!? I have more wine related ‘gadgets’ than any respectable human being should, but for some reason I held off for years on buying a Durand, even though all of you religiously sang it’s praises and I knew it was going to be incredible.
Well…its absolutely incredible, and frankly, even more so than I expected (and my expectations were high). Such a simple design, and yet, so damn effective. It’s now at the point where if it’s even remotely questionable whether the cork is sound, I’ll bust out the Durand…and it always performs. Just had a cork crumble 3/4 of the way down the bottle, and I was able to use my Durand to easily extract the remaining 1/3, where as that previously would have been a ‘push it into the bottle and decent’ scenario.
Please let me know if there’s a Durand fan club, because if not, I’m going to start one tomorrow. Who else is in??
However, before I got one (as a present) I used the spiral of a screwpull in combination with an Ah-So … and it worked similar, sometimes better.
The critical moment, when accessing a questionable cork (which might sit too loose) is when you attach the spiral … all in a sudden the cork can rush down the neck and is easily gone …
so I usually start at the edge of the cork with a 45° degree angle, just to secure it from falling down …
Then I probably use a 2nd spiral - or the Ah-So - or both …
I’m pretty happy with just a $20 Monopole ah so. I use it for 95% of corks, except for synthetic ones, which I don’t have many of anyways. I only got it a few years ago, and kick myself that I didn’t get one earlier.
Maybe the only place where I would really think the Durand would be much better than this would be on really old port bottles. It seems like with those I’m always filtering out cork bits.
Every time I’ve considered buying one, I’ve stopped at the purchase page. It’s hard for me to pull the trigger at that price point (probably not very logical in the context of the overall amount I spend on wine and wine stuff, but I never claimed to be perfectly logical…).
For those of you who have a Durand, do you use it on all bottles, or just the ones with questionable corks?
I use mine only on older bottles but I drink quite a bit of mature wine. I would venture to guess I use it about once a week. More if I’m at a wine dinner with friends.
I keep the thing in its cork “case” in a drawer, so out of laziness I only use it for older bottles. If the wine is ~10-15 years old or younger, I am more likely just to grab the Creuset. But if it is older than that I will invariably grab the Durand. I am with you on the price; it seems ridiculously high for what it is. But the damn things works. And how many tools will you use dozens/scores of times in a year that works better and more reliably than anything else on the market? Seriously, the price is long in my rearview; I love the thing and if I lost it I would buy another in a heartbeat
This, in pretty much all regards. I use it in every bottle I open that’s roughly 15 or more years old; I can’t always tell a frail cork from the top. So I don’t try, and just pull out the durand if the wine’s old enough. Once you’ve used it a couple of times, it’s not any slower than a screwpull.
Before I bought it, I’d oftenish end up dump half an ounce or an ounce of wine from an old bottle that had the cork disintegrate. There would be a fine layer of cork dust on the top. That ruins the wine for me, so I’d spoon or pour out a bit of it from the top (no paper filters for me). The Durand has easily made up its purchase price in saved wine.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but what is the point of screwing through a cork that disintegrates during the process? In that situation, do you just quit with the screw and use the Ah-So component? Seems like if a bad cork is anticipated, just using an Ah-So would be more appropriate. If a good cork is anticipated, why go through two steps? I don’t have one and I don’t drink anything over about 12 years old (except for Porto), so I probably do not fully appreciate the Durand…
But it doesn’t disintegrate with the Durand. Because it has both the screw and the tines. So the force moving the cork is much better distributed. Seriously, this has never once been a problem if I used the Durand.
But if you only rarely drink bottles over 12 years old, it may not have much value for you. I guess it depends on how often you drink older Port, and how often you have problems with the corks.
I imagine (because I’ve yet to use it) the Durand solves some (many?) (all?!?) the problems presented by corks that don’t cooperate with an Ah-so; I suppose the additional mass and outward pressure introduced by the worm helps get those old squishy loose-ish corks out that might otherwise be a bit difficult with an Ah-so.
Santa brought me one for XMas, but I’ve yet to use it. The challenge will be preventing it from getting lost!
It’s a clever and effective device. I’ve been using it for several years. I just now used one to open a bottle of '85 Cheval Blanc after the top 40% of the cork started to break off. My only quibble is that the prongs on the ah-so part tend to be somewhat brutal on the cork, and I often end up with some small pieces of cork in the wine. I have an ah-so that I purchased for $3 over 30 years ago when I visited my first winery, Charles Krug (my tastes have evolved…). That ancient ah-so’s prongs are less aggressive on corks, and I tend to use it rather than the Durand if I don’t feel there’s a major risk of the cork being pushed into the bottle.
Yes and no. The worm is so sharp, small and slippery that it screws right in without putting any outward pressure or downward pressure on the cork. Then, when the worm is installed, the cork stays put while inserting the ah-so. They work so well together.
Sometimes, particularly with an old cork, an Ah-So pushes a cork into bottle. The screw in the Durand prevents this, so you can get the Ah-So part around the cork without this happening. You pull the cork out as you would with an Ah-So.
