I have to say I don’t care for the heavier metal foils that they use in the US. They seem unnecessary to me.
I like the lighter weight nonmetallic ‘foils’ they use more in Europe. These are easy to just grip with the hand and pull off. But with the heavier foils, I find that running the foil cutter of a screw pull angled against very top lip edge is the easiest way to penetrate the foil and start the rip. After that, I usually just pull the bunched up foil downward and take the whole thing off.
If for some reason I make a nice clean cut along the lip, then sometimes I just leave it and pour.
Nice find. Losses a bit of credibility for using the phrase “bottled wine”, but makes it right back up for correctly pointing out that only those who ate paint chips as a child would pour wine with their left hand.
Not surprisingly, lots of folks beat me to the mohel jokes.
If you use the capsule cutter Alex pictured, then you just get the very top above the rim. But if I’m using the knife on the double-jointed waiter’s corkscrew, typically I’ll just remove the entire capsule.
This is definitely a French artifact (I was a somm mentored by a good guy – French, born in Shanghai, French-Russian parentage, fabulous restaurant cellar, etc.). The capsule is part of the marketing of the whole package; it matters very much to those who create and present the bottle. Tearing it off is like, what?, tearing off the label? Whatever. But it matters to them and to “presenters” generally. Including somms.
Not to be a didactic dick (despite also being one, lol), but below the lip is correct. It is safer for the somm (way less likely to cut oneself on either the knife or the paper-cut capsule), cleaner as it permits a cleaner wiping of the neck, isn’t precarious like it is on the top lip so one can keep the bottle more still so less mixing up of sed’s, and it’s way faster because I’m taller than the bottle+table and can pull UP on the knife as I cut the capsule roundabout.
But who cares? At home I pull it off (and often, if anyone care ) if I can and the shades are drawn. At table, I often would ask the customer if they cared and I knew them already. If not, off it came.
My real problem is with wax: a terrible pain in the ass. It hurts! (um, semi-“eww gross; hair” hahaha). It is so difficult to deal with. Someone said “a saber,” above, and I’m inclined to agree.
Edit: just noticed that I wrote below the “capsule” instead of lip. I meant lip.
Matt - I agree with pretty much everything you said. And the marketing aspect makes perfect sense - it’s probably the source of the rule that when you open the bottle you always have the label facing the customer.
But that is exactly the problem - once I bought the wine, why do I care about maintaining a marketing artifact for the producer? And if I pour into a decanter, his capsule and label are both irrelevant. So I’m convincing myself and just looked at the bottle that’s open next to me and of course, I reflexively cut it under the lip.
If you are decanting an old wine for sediment with a candle under the shoulder, it can be useful to remove the whole capsule so that if the sediment leaves the shoulder and goes into the neck you can stop pouring. I believe they do this at Haut Brion, so I doubt Jacques Pepin will take offense!
So MBerto - my point is that you should pitch the Ravenswood, buy some Haut Brion, and cut the foil however you damn well please.
It looks better to cut below the lip. Firstly because if the cut isn’t clean, which it often isn’t with a corkscrew blade, the tear is hidden. Secondly because you can show off the custom “bague” of your expensive bottle.
However, all the foil-cutters cut above the lip and they don’t tear the capsule.
I also found that some of my capsules would slip down the neck if I cut below the lip.
The really fancy way is to have a foil-cutter that cuts it half-way down the lip.
Standard of service is under the lip…when capsules were lead you didn’t want to expose the wine to having contact with lead capsule if you cut above and pour wine over lead.
On top of that below gives you some leverage to have a clean cut…above the lip is amateur, unless you have one of those separate foil cutters vs. knife on waiters key.
So here’s something I hadn’t thought of. We were in a restaurant last night with a lot of bottles that we needed to open and the waitress offered to open them. I watched her for a minute and got another corkscrew and started opening them myself. She was cutting above the lip and for some reason was having a bad time of it.
She saw how I was doing it and asked why I did it that way. I did not bring up this whole thread, just said that it was easier. She tried and realized it was a lot easier for her, because she could apply more pressure to the knife since it was kind of trapped in the corner of the rim. She asked if it was OK to do it that way and I told her some people considered it the “correct” way so she was happy it wouldn’t be considered a faux pas.
Then after she broke a cork, I watched her try to leverage out the next one and suggested that she press to the right while pulling, rather than pull to the left. She was OK with that but found it a little harder.
It occurred to me that there’s actually a bit of wrist strength required to use a waiter’s corkscrew and some women, particularly small ones like this waitress and my wife, consequently find it more difficult than other people do. She was very enthusiastic and efficient but clearly had to expend a little effort to do something that I don’t think burns any calories at all. I reflected for a moment about how humans can be right next to each other, doing the same thing, and yet have completely different experiences.
Then I just forgot about it and turned my attention to drinking the wine.
Every server should have a two stage with a Teflon screw…anything else may look okay, and they usually get them from wineries or distributors, but are terrible in actual situations where you need to get a cork out.
I drink mostly older Bordeaux and for those (even the pre-1980s long corks that I hope Ducru is bringing back into fashion) the Ah-so works beautifully.
) if I can and the shades are drawn. At table, I often would ask the customer if they cared and I knew them already. If not, off it came.