Decade-long Review: Le Creuset/Screwpull Foil Cutter

One of the first wine accessories I ever used was a gift from my younger sister. It was a Screwpull brand gift set that included a corkscrew and a foil cutter. I never got used to the corkscrew portion of the gift set, but the foil cutter served me well for over a decade.

Unfortunately it recently broke. The plastic just just snapped at the apex while I was using it and that was the end of it. I went a few weeks without replacing it because I wasn't sure whether it was a necessary accessory.

If you're not familiar with what a foil cutter is useful for, it's for cleanly severing the foil capsule that covers the top of a corked bottle of wine.

If you don't have a foil cutter, your options are to either peel away the foil capsule altogether, cut it away with the knife that's sometimes built into a corkscrew (which is a little more difficult than using a foil cutter and sometimes results in jagged edges on the remaining foil), or (if the capsule is a little loose) you can just slide it off. Keeping the majority of the capsule on the bottle is purely an aesthetic preference. There's absolutely nothing wrong with tearing the capsule off. I just like the way a bottle looks with the foil cut around the opening.

After a while I started to miss having a foil cutter. I was perfectly happy with my Screwpull so I looked for them on Amazon and found them for around $10 shipped. I noticed some of the reviews saying they "didn't make them like they used to" so I was wondering if I should buy another Screwpull.

Looking a little further I noticed that Screwpull and Le Creuset are the same company and evidently always have been. It looks like Le Creuset is branding more of their wine accessories as their own and the Le Creuset foil cutter gets good reviews on Amazon so I went for the Le Creuset.

It arrived a couple weeks ago and I've been using it since. It feels every bit as good as the last Screwpull that lasted a decade. The Le Creuset may even be a little sturdier.

I'd recommend adding a foil cutter to your collection of wine accessories. They're small and provide a fast and easy way to nicely open, present, and enjoy a bottle of wine.

I'd give this one a full 5 out of 5 stars.
Here's a link to the one I bought off Amazon:

Update: Read this post for some further commentary on where precisely a foil should be cut.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/UoEaZxJUraM/decade-long-review-le-creusetscrewpull.html

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