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I’m planning investigating the cost of having made some corkscrews optimised for vintage port. Please, your help is needed. Every time you open a bottle of port, carefully measure the length of the cork and the inner width of the neck of the bottle. Report in this thread those two linear dimensions (millimetres very much preferred), and the name and vintage of the port.

Thank you.

After years of breaking port corks, and not liking the port tongs idea, I looked far and wide for a screwpull-like corkscrew that would have a worm long enough to fully penetrate the cork before it started to lift it from the bottle. It took a couple of years, but I finally found one in a wine shop in Michigan. I never heard of the brand, and unfortunately didn't record the name, but it was constructed in a way that I could modify it for my purpose. It's worked perfectly for me.

Some photos of the corkscrew are below. I added the white plastic spacers in order to lengthen the run the cork has when it's exiting the bottle neck. Because of the length of the worm, the worm has completely penetrated the cork before it starts to lift out, so the cork doesn't split in half. Due to the plastic spacers, there's enough room where the cork has completely left the neck of the bottle before it reaches the top of the corkscrew, so I don't have to wiggle the cork out the last fraction of an inch, which would cause breakage. The modifications were a no-brainer, which they would have to be because I am very unmechanical.

Julian, I hope this helps with direction on your project.

All the best,
John Danza

I now use the Screwpull Sommelier, which is the best corkscrew I've found to date, but not for the younger bottles, as I'm afraid of breaking it on a very tight cork.

Some design thoughts:

1) Consider using a coiled flat blade rather than a round wire - less damage to the cork.

2) Consider have more spirals than is conventional, to maximise grip on the cork, and minimise the risk of pushing the cork into the bottle through a shallower angle of attack.

3) Consider using a sprung coil that is contained within a tube as it is offered up to the top of the bottle, and then expands to press against the glass as it goes down inside the bottle. This might damage the branding a little, but should minimise the likelihood of cork breakage.

Although corkscrews are modest gadgets, don't underestimate the engineering costs of developing a new device...!

Tom

uncle tom wrote:I now use the Screwpull Sommelier, which is the best corkscrew I've found to date, but not for the younger bottles, as I'm afraid of breaking it on a very tight cork.

I am also a fan of Screwpull, though I’m not sure which models I have.

uncle tom wrote:1) Consider using a coiled flat blade rather than a round wire - less damage to the cork.

Very difficult to make a blade sufficiently rigid (unless I’ve misunderstood).

uncle tom wrote:2) Consider have more spirals than is conventional, to maximise grip on the cork, and minimise the risk of pushing the cork into the bottle through a shallower angle of attack.

Interesting idea. I was going for a spiral both wider and longer — hence the above requests for measurements.

uncle tom wrote:3) Consider using a sprung coil that is contained within a tube as it is offered up to the top of the bottle, and then expands to press against the glass as it goes down inside the bottle. This might damage the branding a little, but should minimise the likelihood of cork breakage.

Oooh, tricky. The spiral will have to exit its bind at the top of the cork. That will make it much trickier to use. Hmmm. Will think about it.

uncle tom wrote:Although corkscrews are modest gadgets, don't underestimate the engineering costs of developing a new device...!

I’m just gathering data and ideas, and perhaps presuming that TPFers would be willing guinea pigs.

Pocas 1991

Length: 38mm
Girth: 18mm

Length, Bottle inner diameter:

• Croft 1970 magnum: 50, 18;
• Croft 1966: 55, ?;
• Croft 1963: 55, ?;
• Croft 1960: 50, ?;
• Croft 1955: 50, ?;
• Croft 1945: 50, 20;
• Croft 1935: 55, ?;
• Croft 1927: 55, ?;
• Croft 1924: 55, ?;
• Croft 1920: 40, ?;
• Croft 1917: 50, 19;
• Croft 1912: 53, 22;
• Croft 1896: 50, ?.

Graham 1985 cork length of 42mm and inner diameter of bottle neck was 17mm.

Alex

I got given a Rabbit-a-like for Christmas and failed to use it for well over a month (unlike me with a new toy). I've tried it on some cheap plonk and it works wonderfully well: clamp it to the bottle; pull the lever down into the cork; pull the lever up to remove cork; Down and up to get cork off the screw. Easy.

I don't like the fact that the screw goes all the way through the cork so I will try to be a bit more subtle.

As far as Port is concerned this maybe interesting with a dodgy cork. I suspect that it may require even more subtlety or may just push the cork in. I will get back to you when I try.

KillerB wrote:I don't like the fact that the screw goes all the way through the cork so I will try to be a bit more subtle.

In my experience, and looking at it from a physics perspective, I think completely penetrating the cork is the only way for a corkscrew to sucessfully remove a port cork. If the entire cork isn't being lifted at one time by the worm, the narrow top part of the cork is trying to pull up on the flared bottom part of the cork, resulting in a split. The cork just isn't strong enough to not shear in two under the pressure of the flared bottom trying to compress down to get out of the narrow neck. Remember, the necks of port bottles are shaped pretty much like the necks of champagne bottles. They are narrower at the top.

Is the real answer to this dilema to petition the port producers to start corking the way champagne producers do, with an extra inch of cork above the bottle for us to grab and pull?

John Danza wrote:Is the real answer to this dilema to petition the port producers to start corking the way champagne producers do, with an extra inch of cork above the bottle for us to grab and pull?

Isn't that what a 'T' cork is really?

John Danza wrote:Is the real answer to this dilema to petition the port producers to start corking the way champagne producers do, with an extra inch of cork above the bottle for us to grab and pull?

No. That would affect new bottles, but wouldn’t help with vintages from the early 1800s to present. For those vintages I want a better corkscrew. (For the rest of my life all 2006+ vintages will be young wines, drawable with a poor corkscrew.)

Graham's 1975: L48-G18.5

Gould Campbell 1991: L37-G18

Many broken corks, so most of these measurements are of the bottle necks’ inner girth.

1970 Graham’s G20 L54
1970 Taylor Vargellas G19
1970 Quinta do Cachão G19
1970 Taylor G19
1970 Nacional G19
1970 Noval G20
1970 Niepoort G18
1970 Kopke G20
1970 Santos Junior magnum G18

I still have the corks and some bottles from many offlines, including The F-Plan, The Up-North 1985 Horizontal and The Deeper Underground 1966 Horizontal. When I have time I will dig them out and post them here.

I also have a large box full of corks. Are cork lengths any good to you without inner bottle girths? If so you can have many lengths posted here.

Derek

Derek T. wrote:I also have a large box full of corks. Are cork lengths any good to you without inner bottle girths? If so you can have many lengths posted here.

Yes. What I need is a reasonable estimate of the 99th percentile cork length (i.e., the longest or near-longest lengths used in practice), and the narrowest inner bottle diameters.

Old corks might have shrunk a little, so if one of your dried out things is the record holder, I might have to add a guesstimated couple of millimetres to it.

I had this idea a drunken while back.

What you have is a thin hollow tube
and inside this tube, you put two tongs
where if you push on a top lever,
the two tongs would extend out from the bottom of the hollow tube and "fan" out below the cork.

you would then be able to just lift the whole cork without even having to worry about pulling it half way deep and ripping the cork.

This resembles Sean’s and Moses’ idea. Hollow tube? How big? Big enough to store a ‘fan’ in it, so 3mm internal diameter, say. Robust enough to be pushed through a cork—no, through a thousand corks—without damage, so quick a thick casing. Are we seeing an engineering problem yet?

I just don’t think it can be made, and made strong enough, and thin enough, and made for less than $1000+. Sorry.

jdaw1 wrote:This resembles Sean’s and Moses’ idea. Hollow tube? How big? Big enough to store a ‘fan’ in it, so 3mm internal diameter, say. Robust enough to be pushed through a cork—no, through a thousand corks—without damage, so quick a thick casing. Are we seeing an engineering problem yet?

I just don’t think it can be made, and made strong enough, and thin enough, and made for less than $1000+. Sorry.

what's a few thousand amongst a few port lovers? actually one of the coolest openers i've seen was at a winery at napa.

Their opener was a needle that went through the cork and shot compressed air popping out the cork

so the way it worked was you put the bottle all the way in so the needle goes past the cork. push compress air in and when you move the bottle downwards the cork will just stay on the needle to be extracted later.

http://www.beveragefactory.com/wine/win ... orce.shtml

with link

g-man wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:Their opener was a needle that went through the cork and shot compressed air popping out the cork

That's assuming the bottle doesn't explode, which has been known to happen on more than a few occassions with these openers. Definitely not for use with bottles 50+ years old.

I used one of those compressed air/needle things at a friends last night. I would not be comfortable using that on an old bottle. Modern glass maybe, as long as there was no flaws in the glass...but no way to tell until it explodes.

So until something better comes out, i'll stick to tongs or an Ah-So on those old bottles. They really are quite easy once you've done it a couple of times.

I had a pump-action needle thingy once. No idea what happened to it, but I tried it on a semi-sparkling one once: that was amusing.

I'm sure I remember that Uncle Tom tried making his own gas pressure cork remover a couple of years ago with explosive results

Derek

I forgot to measure the cork I drew out of the Marks & Spencer 1989 Vintage Port before I threw it away, but it was not a long cork by any means.

The inner diameter of the bottle neck was 19mm.

Alex

Opened a bottle of Churchill's 1985 VP this morning (courtesy of JDAW). Cork was 51mm long and the inner diameter of the neck was 19mm.

Taylor's 1985

L: 48mm
G: 18mm

There were only 4 intact corks that survived the Deeper Underground Offline. All of the bottles were left at the venue so Girth measurements not available.

• Quninta do Noval 1966 - L:53mm
• Warre 1966 - L43mm
• Graham's 1966 - L:51mm
• Morgan 1966 - L:50mm

Derek

I have 10 intact corks from the F-Plan Offline. The bottles are in my garage somewhere so you will have to wait for Girth measurements

• Fonseca 1963 - L:49mm
• Fonseca 1966 - L:50mm
• Fonseca 1970 - L:51mm
• Fonseca 1975 - L:50mm
• Fonseca 1977 - L:45mm
• Fonseca 1980 - L:47mm
• Fonseca 1983 - L:47mm
• Fonseca 1985 - L:48mm
• Fonseca 1992 - L:43mm
• Fonseca 2000 - L:50mm

Derek

Corks from the 1985 Horizontal in Craster, Northumberland in January 2008. Girths will be posted another day:

• Dow's 1985 - L:42mm
• Fonseca 1985 - L:47mm
• Warre's 1985 - L:48mm
• Martinez 1985 - L:49mm
• Quinta do Noval 1985 - L:46mm
• Croft 1985 - L:35mm

Derek

Sandemann's 77 - L: 44mm d: 19mm

Graham's Malvedos 1996 - L:45mm, G:17mm

1985 Croft

I measured in inches using a micrometer and converted it ti millimeters using a website.

Cork data:

Length: 1.952 in. / 49.6 mm
Cork diameter at top: .684 in / 17.4 mm
Cork diameter at bottom: .852 in / 21.6 mm

Bottle inside neck diameter: .666 in / 16.9 mm

I can only attribute the neck diameter being 666 to the quality of this wine, which at opening wasn't too promising.

1977 Burmester: 45mm, 18mm.

Dow 1970 - L51mm:G19mm

Morgan 1989 - L47mm:G18

The Morgan cork does not have the shippers name on it - simply "Vintage 1989" on a cork that definately does not look 17 years old. I wonder if ssome of these were re-corked before they were shipped out of the Croft cellar last year?

Derek

Cockburn 1912 17mm diameter, 51mm long
Vesuvio 2005 18mm diameter, 45mm long

AHB wrote:Cockburn 1912 17mm diameter, 51mm long
Vesuvio 2005 18mm diameter, 45mm long

AHB,

Now that you have posted the cork dimensions perhaps now would be a good time to update the TNs and Review?

D

I am slowly catching up with all the things that I need to catch up with having been away from a decent internet connection since Wednesday last week.

Tasting notes and review - and update of the Offline Summary - will follow shortly.

Alex

Small collection of corks found whilst doing last-day house-move packing, the longest of which were 52mm to 54mm.

Time-saving announcement.

Please, if you open a bottle of port and the cork is longer than 55mm, tell me. Scores ≤55mm are no longer useful to this survey.

Please, if you open a bottle of port and the inner diameter of the neck is narrower than 18mm, tell me. Scores ≥18mm are no longer useful to this survey.