Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood for Some, But Not Necessary
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2011
We are "wine people" and my husband loves gadgets so I got this for him a few Valentine's Day's ago, after seeing Cook's Illustrated's recommendation. We probably got our money's worth of use out of it in the past two years or so, but I can't say it's a must-have.
When this works, it's great, but we've had multiple instances of it shredding a cork and then having to spend a LONG time digging the cork bits out of the Waring Cordless in order to get it to work again. If even a teeny tiny chunk of cork gets into the mechanism it will not function and getting every bit of cork out of the closed mechanism is awkward, time consuming, tedious and, above all, frustrating. That has lead me to go back to our simple, ten-year-old screwpull (not the big lever models, just the basic $10 doodad, which we've found works even better), which always gets the job done the first time. The Waring's other drawbacks are the another-thing-on-the-counter syndrome, which can be a hassle if you're short on space, and the fact that it doesn't work very well on synthetic corks. This will usually open synthetics OK, but sometimes gets stucks, the real trick is that even if the corks come out of the bottle easily, it's very hard to get off the worm. You have to put pressure on the cork/mechanism to do it, and in the process it's easy to poke/stab yourself. Doesn't usually shred like a real cork can, but it is another potential hassle factor.
I know plenty of other people who have this and love it, and if you're opening bottles for a crowd (10-20 at a time), or have any kind of arthritis, this is a good gadget that gets the job done quickly and easily about 95% of the time. It's just not needed for the majority of folks and that 5% when it doesn't work correctly can be a major pain.