Customer Reviews:
 Excellent! October 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an excellent wine opener, offering great value for the price.
Sure, we can all buy the 4$ wine opener from the local grocery, but, when it comes down to it- if you're drinking nice wine, you want a nice wine opener (if only for aesthetic purposes).
This opener serves both needs- aesthetic and functional.
 Penguin Cafe Accessory October 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ok, little joke on a favorite obscure music group, Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Anyway, this is a wonderful gift for anyone you know who regularly drinks corked wines and is a leetle, just a leetle bit clumsy with the corkscrew.
Here are some corkscrews we have around the house and my opinion of them versus The Penguin.
1. Swiss Army Knife. Good in a pinch if you have massive upper arm strength and a hearty Swiss-grade cork in your cheapo wine bought on vacation while roughing it as a student in Europe.
2. The Fork: This is a slim device with two tempered steel blades that fit along side the cork. You wedge them into the bottle and pull up. This works well on wholesome corks of the old-fashioned variety. This type of opener, which was my personal favorite, is a "fail" against the new composite corks or heavens, don't even try one of those plastic imitations you find in Aussie Shiraz. Don't go there.
3. The two-lever type. Screw in corkscrew. Pull out cork with levers. Ok if cork is not crumbly or if you get it centered. Otherwise, not so hot.
Now, the Penguin. While elaborately consisting of several (large) pieces, none of which fit into my rucksack, the Penguin does allow you to pull a cork easily and to re-fit it back into the bottle. Thus you don't need a Vacu-Vin type of corker--just put the cork back in if you don't drink the entire bottle. (See, here, if you don't drink alone and if you don't drink excessively, you need to recork. I'll bet some of you are saying "recork--what?")
The box this comes in is very handsome--burgundy flocked cardboard with fine, well-cushioned sections for each portion.
To Use the Penguin:
A. Push the bottom of the opener on top of the bottle
B. Lift the handle and set opener on neck of bottle
C. Push the handle down, this action grabs the cork.
D. Push the handle back in original position, cork extracted. Easy as pie.
 Broke on the first try! October 22, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I received the Pinzon Penguin wine opener set today, which gave me an excuse to have some wine with dinner! Always a good thing. We picked a bottle and used the foil cutter. It's very stylish and worked nicely. Then I dug the bottle opener itself out of the box; it's in there quite tightly.
The directions are virtually non-existent, just some numbered pictures showing the steps. There are no written instructions, no warnings about synthetic corks. I put it on the bottle, squeezed, moved the lever down and up and...nothing. I looked at the "directions" and tried again. Nothing. The opener was stuck on the bottle and wouldn't come off. My husband tried, and the lever jammed. He gently pulled it off the bottle. The cork, a synthetic one, was still fully in place and the opener was broken, with something rattling inside it. The lever won't move more than an inch or two, so it's useless after one attempt.
Since you don't know until you remove the foil if the cork is real or rubber, having a wine opener that doesn't work on synthetic ones is rather pointless. More and more wineries are distributing bottles with synthetic corks to prevent rotten corks from spoiling the wine, and the bottle I was opening wasn't a cheap one. I grabbed my classic waiter's corkscrew and bing bam boom, my bottle was open. At that point, we both needed a drink!!!
I did try the wine bottle stopper and it seems to have created a vacuum seal on the bottle but I am not convinced it really sucked the air out, which is key to preventing spoilage. It's keeping a persistent fruit fly at bay and for now, that's sufficient. I'll use my VacuVin wine stopper when I want to really cork it, because after my experience with the opener, I honestly don't trust it to work properly and am not willing to risk half a bottle of wine to find out.
As a side note, the person receiving this gift set has to figure out on his or her own what the foil remover and cork stopper are, because there's absolutely nothing in the box to tell you. I'm a wine enthusiast so I knew what they were, but a novice who is choosing this item as an easy way to open and store wine would be completely in the dark.
I would recommend the rabbit-eared puller, the original that started this how-can-I-quickly-get-into-that-bottle-if-I-can't-use-a-corkscrew craze. It's worth the money and it does the job. There's no shame in not being able to use a corkscrew, but there are better options than this!
Oh why didn't I get one for me? February 19, 2008
I ordered this for my Newly wed daughter whose cork screw opener had broken.
Yesterday I had the pleasure and rare opportuiny to spend time with my first born. I love my son in law and I am sure he loves me but they are still on their Honeymoon.
Me? I am just going stay on the side lines and await the results!
Now back to this marvelous tool. I wanted wine with dinner and she whips this out. It is the first time I had ever seen it. She started rave about the wonderful little Item I had added to her Christmas list. Her friends were all impressed with this little gadget and wanted one too. I picked it up and followed the directions; Wow with no exertion I had uncorked the wine in mere seconds flat. I have a rabbit type tool and have difficulty holding the "ears" and I need real strength to push and pull. The exertion was totaling absence with this Penguin opener. I like it, just mad at the price they are asking now
and it's retired? I might have to break my vow on getting stuff at whole sale prices.
 Wine Stopper December 17, 2007
The wine opener is great, easy to use, love it. I purchased 3 gift sets & 2 of the 3 wine stoppers broke after the 2nd or 3rd use.
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