The bargain-bin item this retired history teacher can’t get enough of

The thrill of finding a unique corkscrew in an op-shop is like striking gold for Kevin Farrell.

“It’s a eureka-type moment, it really is,” he says. 

The retired history teacher from Griffith, in south-west New South Wales, has about 1,500 corkscrews in his collection.

He has been collecting the twisty tools for about 25 years and the more his collection grows, so does his obsession. 

“It’s extraordinary how many different corkscrews people have made that are floating around in our society,” Kevin says. 

“I love old things that people used to use because there’s always a story behind it.”

Winged or two-pronged

Kevin’s love of corkscrews began when he and his wife Sally decided to dabble in winemaking, inspired by their region’s rich history with the industry.

“One of the bottlings was done at a winery where they inadvertently used a cork that wasn’t up to scratch,” he says.

“When we took the cork out using normal wing-nut cork removers, the cork just fragmented.”

And so his search began to find something to pull out the cork without winding up with debris in his wine. 

The answer was a nifty corkscrew with two prongs on either side. 

“I’d never seen one like that before,” he says.

Kevin set out to see what other types of cork removers were out there. 

“I found other kinds of corkscrews. There’s this kind and that kind. And oh, there’s a different one and it just grew from there,” he says. 

Holy grail of corkscrews

The 82-year-old is more determined than ever to add to his collection and scours op-shops on a weekly basis.

“You’ve got to be careful because you don’t want to twig any other corkscrew collectors in St Vinnies that you’ve found one,” he chuckles.  

His array ranges from corkscrews dating back to the 19^th century to novelty items, very few of which are the same.

But there’s a holy-grail item that has so far eluded Kevin.

“I really would like to find one made of actual fence wire … that some bloke has made out in the country, you know how good Australian farmers are at being improvisers?” he says. 

Do we even need corkscrews anymore?

Part of Kevin’s fascination with cork removers comes from a trend in Australia to move away from using corks in wine bottles. 

“Another reason I like collecting the corkscrews is I know, historically, they’re not going to be used one day,” Kevin says. 

“I’m dreading the Americans and the French going to screw-tops.”

The Australian Wine industry experimented with screw-caps in the 1970s but it wasn’t until 1999 when a group of winemakers in South Australia, paired with the Australia Wine Research Institute (AWRI), put them to the test with the age-old cork. 

Kieran Hirlam, a project manager with Affinity Labs, part of the Australian Wine Research Institute, says the results over two, five and 10 years spoke for themselves.

“That consistency they were getting from the product that was packaged was far greater within the screw-cap,” he says.

Kieran says the Australian market has embraced the ease and protection that comes from not using a cork. 

“There’s about 81 per cent of red wines under screw-cap within Australia and that number’s up to 95 per cent for white varieties,” he says. 

In Australia and New Zealand, the adoption of the screw-cap was almost instant, but many other countries still prefer the pop of a cork. 

So worldwide, not all corkscrews are sitting idle in kitchen drawers.

“Sixty-five per cent of wines globally are sealed with a cork, so I think it’s here to stay,” Kieran says.

As for Kevin’s collection, he hopes it will be one day be displayed in a local museum to pay tribute to the quirky implements. 

“They’re part of the history of wine, which Griffith is famous for,” he says.