Wine accessories

First choose your opener. A waiter's corkscrew with a double hinge pulls the cork up in two movements and is therefore less likely to bend with long corks; the foil cutter is built in. If you work at home and would rather not lift, a lever model from the corkscrews range is quieter to use.

For aeration, you have two options. An aerating pourer mixes air in as the wine leaves the neck and works within a second, making it the fastest option at the table or on a terrace. A decanter does more: thanks to its wide surface, it gives a young, tannic wine twenty to sixty minutes to open up, and with an old bottle it separates the sediment from the wine. If you only want to keep it at temperature, you are well served by the wine coolers.

Cut the foil below the second rim of the neck so the wine never runs along the metal. Position the tip of the spiral slightly off-center in the cork and turn straight down until one coil remains visible; turning further pushes cork dust into the bottle.

Never fill a glass beyond the widest point of the bowl. That may seem frugal, but you need the space above it to swirl and smell, and with white wine, a smaller amount also stays cold longer. Seal whatever remains in the bottle with a wine stopper: kept upright and cool, it preserves the flavor of an opened bottle for two to three days, including red wine.

Rinse decanters and aerators straight after use with warm water and no washing-up liquid, because soap residue stays detectable and you taste it again in the next bottle. Let a decanter drain upside down on a drying stand, never with the opening upwards, or moisture stays behind in the bowl.

Polish glasses with a polishing cloth while they are still slightly warm; cold glass streaks more easily. Hold the bowl as you do it, not the stem, because most breakage comes from twisting force on the foot. Stainless steel parts can go in the machine, but wash plated and wooden parts by hand.

If you are looking for the glass rather than the tool, start with the wine glasses, which are organized by grape variety and bowl size. Those who mainly use wine in cocktails will find the proportions for a sangria and a kir royal on the recipe pages. If your sole concern is keeping a bottle cold on the table, a standalone cooler is more targeted than a complete accessory set. For the hospitality industry, it is worthwhile to keep a spare of the items used daily on hand, because a corkscrew in particular disappears without anyone knowing how.