The Truth About Corkers

The truth is, what you expect to be the most exciting and rewarding part of your DIY wine making adventure (bottling!) may instead be a frustrating mess depending on the device used to insert corks into your bottles: the Corker.

When I began making wine, I purchased a kit that came with a very simple corker. It was a small, two-piece device made of what felt like rubber or plastic. A cork would be inserted into one piece, while another piece pushed down through the first, forcing the cork into a bottle. Easy, right?

Below are some pictures of that device. With a broken cork stuck in it from my very first (and last) attempt to use it. And honestly, before I even used this corker, my expectations of it were low. (I had watched a YouTube video of a guy who got so frustrated with it, he used a hammer to insert his corks instead.)

I did, however, have higher expectations of the second corker I tried. I purchased this style corker on Amazon in hopes of a better experience.

First, let me say that I am not a weak person in terms of upper-body strength. But the amount of force that this "tool" requires to actually push a cork into a bottle... I don't seem to have it. It took the help of someone... uh, ... a little more manly than me. And even then, both of us were on the floor, one steadying the bottle and praying, the other using their body weight - and then some - to force the levers down and the cork into the bottle.

This corker also had some other flaws. After using it on just 6 bottles, the protective rubber coating on the arms that grip the bottle was split and falling apart. Without this coating, it's just metal against glass when inserting a cork.

Both of these corkers went in the trash.

I'm now using a floor model like this one, and things are going a lot more smoothly.