Wine accessories

Start with your opener. A waiter's friend with a double hinge lifts the cork in two movements and is therefore less likely to buckle on long corks; the foil cutter is built in. If you work at home and would rather not lift, a lever model from the corkscrews is calmer to use.

For air there are two routes. An aerating pourer mixes in air as the wine leaves the neck and works within a second, which is the fastest option at the table or on a terrace. A decanter does more: the wide surface gives a young, tannic wine twenty to sixty minutes to open up, and with an older bottle it separates the sediment from the wine. If you only want to hold temperature, the wine coolers are the place to look.

Cut the foil below the second lip of the neck, so the wine never runs over the metal. Set the tip of the worm slightly off-centre on the cork and turn straight down until one coil is still visible; turning further pushes cork dust into the bottle.

Never fill a glass past the widest point of the bowl. It looks stingy, but you need the room above to swirl and to smell, and with white wine a smaller amount also stays cold longer. Close off whatever is left in the bottle with a wine stopper: stored upright and cool, an opened bottle keeps its flavour for two to three days that way, red wine included.

Rinse decanters and aerators straight after use with warm water and no washing-up liquid, because soap residue stays detectable and you taste it again in the next bottle. Let a decanter drain upside down on a drying stand, never with the opening upwards, or moisture stays behind in the bowl.

Polish glasses with a polishing cloth while they are still slightly warm; cold glass streaks more easily. Hold the bowl as you do it, not the stem, because most breakage comes from twisting force on the foot. Stainless steel parts can go in the machine, but wash plated and wooden parts by hand.

If you are after the glass rather than the tools, start with the wine glasses, where the arrangement runs by grape and by bowl size. If you mostly use wine in cocktails, the proportions for a sangria and a kir royal are on the recipe pages. If all you want is to keep a bottle cold on the table, a single cooler is more to the point than a complete accessory pack. In the trade it pays to keep a spare of the items in daily use, because a corkscrew in particular disappears without anyone knowing how.