When it comes to corkscrews, nothing beats the old-fashioned double-lever

The waitress settled our bottle of wine between her sturdy thighs and pulled, grunting. Nothing. Next, she set it on the floor between her feet, yanked again, and this time the cork came out with a pop. I've seen wine opened more elegantly. "Why do waiters always use those tiny, awkward little corkscrews," asked my friends, "when they have to open so many bottles?"

It's a good question. Screwpull (www.screwpull.co.uk), which makes state-of-the-art corkscrews, actually has a model named the "waiter's corkscrew", compact as a penknife with a flip-out spiral and foil-cutter. It's a nifty little thing, but not first choice for most of us when we're rummaging in the kitchen drawer, desperate to get into that bottle within the next three seconds.

LoIc Maillet, who won this year's Champagne Ruinart UK Sommelier of the Year competition, explains: "You just want something small and sleek that will fit into your pocket and has no bits of metal sticking out so that it will make a hole in it. A sharp blade is a bonus, as with the wine I decant I cut the foil on the total length so I can put it back for presentation."

LoIc himself uses one made by Laguiole: "For years, I had the cheaper version with the wooden handle. When I won the Ruinart, the winemaker Michel Laroche and his wife gave me the Chateau-Laguiole version, which is very smart." Indeed. The most famous Chateau-Laguiole corkscrew is quite an object of desire. It has a handle made of Aubrac black buffalo horn and costs £72.50 from www.wineware.co.uk.

I have a huge collection of corkscrews, some of them such large and complicated-looking contraptions that I never want to get them out of the box. My experience is that the ubiquitous fish ones break very easily. I'm not keen on the design Screwpull calls the "table model" (too much hassle to extract the cork from the screw afterwards). In fact, all things considered, no corkscrew has been able to dislodge the old-fashioned double-lever style from my affections. All right, it doesn't look very good, but it does the job very nicely and it's not too fussy.

However, LoIc has not finished dispensing bottle-opening advice. He says that fine wines intended for longer ageing tend to have longer corks, so you need a longer spiral to extract them safely. "The secret is to pull the cork in two phases: a third of it first, then screw the rest of the spiral and gently pull."

At the opposite end of the scale, if you are drinking plonk and have lost the corkscrew, remove the capsule then whack the bottom of the bottle a dozen or so times and, if you are lucky, the pressure may force out the stopper. I have not actually tried this, but am assured it works. Alternatively, force the cork back into the bottle (I have had success with this method). Better still, go out and buy a new corkscrew.

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