Cork Puller – Ah So Wine Opener

The Ah So Wine Opener, also called a Cork Puller or sometimes Butlers Friend, is an amazing little device.

It enables you to remove a cork from a wine bottle without puncturing it like with a cork screw and potentially leaving little bits of cork in the wine as well as damaging or breaking the cork. It’s cheap and easy to use although using it requires a little explanation. It is also great for opening older bottles of wine and that it the main reason I always keep one handy, although it’s great for just about opening any bottle of wine sealed with a cork or artificial cork (it doesn’t work so well on screw caps!).

It’s a twin pronged wine opener as you can see in the photo. One prong is longer than the other, and it is shimmied between the cork and the side of the bottle neck a little. The next prong is similarly shimmied on the other side of the cork. Each side is pushed in little by little, taking care not to push the cork into the bottle. Once the two prongs are all the way down the cork, it is simply pulled up (hence the term “cork puller”) with a slight twisting motion.

It is also fairly easy to reinsert the cork after extracting it with an Ah So Wine Opener, resealing the bottle.

So why is it called an “Ah-So”? Supposedly, "Ah-so" come from the German name, "Ach so," meaning “I see.” Since it’s appearance and how to use it is somewhat confusing initially, but quickly becomes clear once demonstrated, people supposed remark “Ach so” as they see how it works.

Older bottles of wine often have fragile or deteriorating corks. For example one recent weekend opening Bordeaux from the 60 and 70 as well as some older Ports, almost every cork broke while we were extracting it, sometimes making mess of lots of little cork pieced floating in the wine. If we had had an Ah So Wine Opener or Cork Puller if you prefer, we could have attempted to remove the brittle corks without piecing them as a traditional corkscrew type wine opener does, and I’m sure far more would have been removed without incident. I think I may buy another and keep it in my car so I always have one handy even when visiting friends!

Click Here to learn more about the Ah-So wine opener, also known as a Cork Puller