Zyliss d-list

Several years ago we were at the home of a friend. He was using this marvelous corkscrew to open a bottle of wine and proclaimed it (the corkscrew, not the wine) the best ever. He said it was expensive. (All things are relative.) Not to be deterred, I followed his lead and found one. Loved it. Loved it so much I gifted our sons with one each.

It was a Zyliss corkscrew with foil cutter. While the foil cutter was nice, I could have foregone that for the simplicity of the corkscrew. One just keeps twisting. There's no twist in, twist out. No pull, pull, pull. Rarely a broken cork. Works on real and synthetic corks. We finally managed to split the plastic around the foil cutter part which also acts as a balance for the bottle's neck, so I used strong tape and bandaged it.

You probably know where this is heading. Our corkscrew is almost dead. It takes a certain "touch" and patience to get it to work. (I have it; someone else in the family does not.) I've casually looked for a replacement, but to no avail. So I started searching the internet. While there's a picture on Amazon (see link above), there's no seller or price. There's one available in Australia but by the time it got here, it really would be expensive. Nothing close on ebay.

So I did what I should have done in the first place: emailed customer service for Zyliss USA. A prompt reply told me they had discontinued making it two years ago. None for sale.

Oh. (But say that as you swallow the lump in your throat.) Now what? Was I going to have to retrain myself to another?

Then I was telling this very sad (IMO) tale to the second son. Come to find out, they rarely use theirs, preferring another type instead. Hand it over, I said. And I'm going to email him and remind him of that right now!