Customer Reviews

MIU France Zinc Alloy Connoisseur Corkscrew Wine Opener

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

I am a disabled vet with one good hand, this opener can not be easier to use. A simple squeeze of the handle, depress the lever, and your wine is un-corked. Do the same in reverse while holding the cork and you have the cork intacted for re-corking. We love it!

This opener is extremely well made and works well. I have broken many lesser models and am very happy with finding this gem. I would highly recommend.

Opening wine was never so easy. Cut the foil, grasp the bottle, pump the lever, and you're done. Easy to use, even for a klutz like me.

This unit works very well, though there are some disappointing aspects that a first-time user should be aware of.

First, cycle the unit through its FULL range in order to lock the guide bushing in its lower position. This lower position is where the guide bushing needs to be for cork extraction AND cork removal. To get to the lower position you need to cycle the unit into a detent position, which will be at the end of the "free" motion range - simply add a bit more force to your cycle, and the unit falls into this critical detent.

Second, check the spring pin that is installed in the guide bushing's cross-hole; this pin needs to be inserted fully through the guide bushing AND the bushing housing (look for pin ends at both sides of the housing - mine came half installed, but the bent pin did look intentional at first glance). If your pin is not installed correctly, return the unit for an exchange, or drive the pin into its proper location if the pin is straight enough to do so.

And, third: LIGHTLY lubricate your screw with PAM, mineral oil (you do have mineral oil to treat your wood cutting boards, don't you?), or some other cooking oil; just wet a paper towel with the lube, run it down the spiral, then wipe it to a thin coating - match this lube with the factory Teflon coat, and you'll have a cork pulling spiral that will outlast your neighbor's un-lubricated unit. All corkscrews should be kept lubricated, as it greatly reduces the stresses encountered while driving a thin member into a compressed, resistive material. Non-lubricated corkscrews break, it's a fact of life. Most people, though, think the spiral breakage is just the way it is - which it is, but you can significantly delay this failure by lubricating the spiral. That squeaking you hear as you drive a corkscrew home? Yup, caused by resistance, and a sure sign that your corkscrew is being exposed to more stresses that it need be. Lubricating your spiral will also keep the synthetic cork from marring the Teflon coating; again, increasing the lifespan of the spiral.

This product got shot with a 4 rating due to the junky instructions and improperly installed pin. I caught the pin too late, and chewed up my guide bushing with the first four corks I pulled. Amazon was, as usual, plenty willing to send a replacement. Make sure you keep your spiral lubricated, and I'm rather sure you'll get plenty of life from your first one - remember the manufacturer gave you a replacement because the spiral will break, eventually.

I am amazed at this product!! I am newly single after many years and realized that my wine bottle opener was the pits.

This product is easy -- incredibly so -- and sturdy. I am in wine heaven!!

Since I began drinking wine, the biggest problem was the effort spent on getting the cork out of the bottle. With most cork screws, unless you drill it in so far as to go through the cork, and in the process getting little bits of cork in your wine, the cork will not come out of the bottle without a little extra twisting and pulling which, when drinking red wine, could have a negative effect of your clothing if spilled. Looking around in some specialty stores for "the best" wine opener, I came across one in "Williams & Sonoma" which cost $129.00. There was no way in the world I was going to pay that kind of money for a wine opener. I spotted the MIU France Zinc Alloy Wine Opener on Amazon.com which looked similar in principal to the one I had seen in the store and decided to order one. This is the best twenty dollars I ever spent. Matter of fact, I have purchased three more since then. Two as gifts and one for a sister-in-law who asked me to order one for her husband for Fathers day after she saw it in action. It is so easy to operate, my 9yr old could open a bottle of wine with it. There is no pamplet in the box giving instructions on how to use it but they give you step by step pictures on the outside of the box to show you. Included inside is a foil cutter (which I just found out how to use) and extra screws in case one breaks. It works with synthetic corks as well.
So Easy:
Just clamp the two handles around the bottle, pull the lever forward - which drills the screw in, pull the lever back, and the cork comes right out with NO addition twisting and pulling. To get the cork off the screw, repeat the process.
I highly recommend this wine opener!

I'm not sure what the other reviewers are smoking, but this is one very poorly-made opener. Mine came apart after opening three bottles of wine.

I have an engineering degree, and I have owned about 5 of this style (Screwpull) of opener over the last 20 years of wine drinking -- this is my first Miu. In my opinion, this is a very poorly made opener. The manufacturing/assembly tolerances are very sloppy and the action of the opener is not smooth.

My opener failed because the cap the contains the top of the screw came off, stripping the threads. I examined the threads and they are poorly formed -- and poorly designed, with the "thread coverage" of only about 1.5 and a very loose tolerance. Think of screwing your garden hose-end onto a sprayer, but only doing 1.5 turns and you get a sense of the looseness that I mean.

The opener as a whole has the same sloppy tolerances and while it may look good from a distance (or in a small picture on Amazon's website), once you really *look* at it close up, it looks cheap and poorly made. Even the black "chassis" only looks like high-quality carbon-fiber (or whatever it is that the top models use) but in reality is somewhat soft plastic that you can bend pretty easily.

If you're at all doubting this review, please go to a good wine shop and just handle a couple different brands, paying attention to how "tight" and "smooth" the operation (action) of the various models is. The sloppier the action, the more force you need to exert to open a bottle and the more wear and tear you place on the parts. Check it out.

I don't write many reviews, but this was just such a sad product and I would feel bad if people bought this and never got to know how great this style of opener can be. I owned two Screwpull-brand models, both of which worked flawlessly for years and years, and would still be going (they may yet be) but I lost one in a divorce and the other to theft at a party (hmmm -- maybe they had a Miu?).

I have since gone through three different "cheap" ones, two were business gifts and lasted a year or so, and this latest one lasting a record-short 3 bottles. Simply amazing.

My birthday is in September and you can bet what is on my list. Now I just need a wine-lover style padlock and chain so that it doesn't disappear again.

Not only is this item extremely well made, it actually works - and works fantastic. De-corking takes a matter of seconds and is about as idiot proof as it gets.

I'm not sure what one reviewer was complaining about; how it wasn't working on synthetic corks. Perhaps he doesn't know how to use the opener, but there is absolutely no issue with synthetic corks... I actually think it works better with them than standard cork - corks.

The only complaint, if you can call it that, is that this opener is not exactly a small device, and I wouldn't it expect it to fit into too many utility drawers, but 'hey' I happen to like the way it looks and I keep it displayed on my bar in it's "stand." I just like that fact that it doesn't look or feel cheap and even more so, that it works beautifully.

This is a March 2010 update.

I originally bought this item in 2006, and I was delighted. Thought it absolutely ingenious. At the time, the item rightfully deserved five stars. I now had to edit the original review as I can't write a second one.

I bought the same model as a gift in 2008 that was still decent, yet of somewhat reduced quality. As my original finally broke after many very hard uses, I just bought another one in 2010.

But this is no longer the fine product it used to be. The handles have way too much play now. And they are a bit too long now. Also, one can see that the attachments of the handles to the main body are not going to hold for many uses, not even normal ones. This is simply lousy quality now. In addition, the extra corkscrew spiral was missing in the package. So you better look for another product now.

Edit May 2010: This replacement broke after just about 2 months of use. At about three bottles or less per week, that makes around 25 bottles at most, before it gave up! Thus, my prediction, sadly, was correct. It seems, however, that my review still shows five stars when displayed? I changed it to one in March 2010.


This is my original review that I left for you to see how badly this product was altered:

"I have known other fine openers for wine bottles, but this one beats them all. Whether it's cork or synthetic material, it works almost like magic. This holds for removing the cork from the opener as well. What a joy to operate this fine tool. Sorry if I sound a bit too excited. But practical items that come so close to do a job the perfect way really get my admiration. The only drawback: this tool is a bit bulky and thus requires more storage room than a "screw-pull" type. But I am amazed every time. And it looks like it is really built to last. It comes with two spare spirals too. And the foil cutter is perfect as well!
I only wonder why I had to wait till I travelled to the US to get this fine wine opener at such a low price."

Added comment August 08, 2008: With a few more years of practical use, I should add one drawback. The perfect function depends on the intact teflon coating of the spiral. Synthetic corks tend to wear that coating off rather quickly. Thus, I now use a conventional model for synthetic "corks". At any rate, that teflon coating wears off after a while. And while it is possible to get replacements, these are relatively expensive. It is absurd if one has to pay as much for two spirals as for the whole set with its two spares.

Added comment 27 December 2009: This one finally broke on Christmas Day. It did find ample and often hard use for a total of about three and a half years. It broke at the weakest spot of the cast. I'm going to get another one as, over all, I was very pleased with this one.

This is my first review of a product. I really don't bother spending the time to write about anything, but this is too wonderful not to. No more twisting. I can finally relax knowing I won't loose half the cork in the bottle. Get One!!!