Urban Wood corkscrew 'Tiger Eye' Tatoo in Tube packaging

Sustainable and universal

The L'Iroquois collection pays tribute to the ancestral values of the First Nations: respect for nature, community life and hospitality. L'Iroquois Wood is its wooden expression. The handle is cut from hevea, the rubber tree, whose timber comes from responsibly managed plantation forests. Hevea is planted for its latex and felled when it stops producing, after twenty-five to thirty years of tapping: this handle is a second life for the tree, not the product of natural forest logging. Under the handle sits the LIGNE W service mechanism. A serrated blade cuts the foil at the neck of the bottle. The worm, the screw that enters the cork, is Teflon-coated: it slides in without crumbling the cork. The double lever rests on the lip of the bottle in two stages, so there is no need to force long corks. The body is stainless steel with a brushed finish, satin rather than shiny. Closed, the knife measures 12.2 cm and weighs 79 g. The design is deliberately plain, with no ornament, so that it suits every table. This reference comes in a transparent magnetic tube, ready to be given as it is; the same knife is also sold in a white gift box under reference LW15018. A service tool for a sommelier on the floor, a wine merchant or a wine lover, and a gift at a measured price. Hevea is the rubber tree. It is planted for its latex, tapped for twenty-five to thirty years, then felled once it stops producing: its pale, straight-grained timber is a second harvest from the tree rather than the product of natural forest logging. The species is listed in no CITES appendix and is rated Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. The Maison's catalogue calls it « rubber wood », the term the Taiwanese distributor also uses. Within the LIGNE W range, L'Iroquois Wood is the entry point into natural materials. L'Iroquois Colors, at 24 €, carries the same mechanism on a PLA handle, a bioplastic made from sugar cane and corn, in twenty colours. Urban Wood uses exactly this hevea handle, laser-engraved with a pattern, and sells at 39 € (49 € for the « Toit des Hospices de Beaune » no. 58). Urban Street Art moves to PBT printed by sublimation, Urban Zinc to zinc, 140 g in the hand. Above them, the W collection changes register: W Origine (45 to 60 €) cuts its handle from oak barrels that aged wine, W Signature (120 to 250 €) from thirteen woods and horns, with catalogue warranties of 2 and 5 years. Below, L'Essentiel (15 €) keeps the mechanism on a soft TPR handle. Compared with a Château LAGUIOLE® sommelier knife, the difference is one of construction, not of finish. The Château LAGUIOLE carries a forged bee, a guilloché spring (the spine of the knife, decorated with an engraved pattern known as guillochage), one or two bolsters (the metal pieces capping the ends of the handle) and liners (the steel plates that hold the mechanism under the handle). L'Iroquois Wood has none of these parts: a smooth silhouette, a double lever, and a price of another order, 34 € against 205 € for the least expensive Château LAGUIOLE® Classic. LIGNE W was founded in 2008 by Sébastien Lézier and became known for its double-lever sommelier knives. At the end of 2017 the brand took over Château LAGUIOLE®, created in 1993 by Guy Vialis, a sommelier, who died in 2016; since 2021 both brands have stood, alongside Guy Vialis, under the umbrella brand Maison Château LAGUIOLE®. The Maison's products are made in its workshop in Thiers, in the Puy-de-Dôme, the French capital of cutlery. The Maison is a partner of the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale (ASI) and of the Union de la Sommellerie Française (UDSF), and supports the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.