Château LAGUIOLE corkscrew Classic Maple wood

The original model, since 1993

In 1993, sommelier Guy Vialis designed the first luxury sommelier corkscrew: the Château LAGUIOLE® Classic. More than thirty years on, this original model is still made in Thiers (Puy-de-Dôme, France) and is recognisable at a glance by its forged bee and its guilloché spring, the engraved decorative spine. It is a tool first. A serrated blade cuts the foil at the neck of the bottle; a five-turn stainless steel worm enters the cork; the lever rests on the lip of the bottle and the cork comes out without effort. Body and lever are made of Sandvik 12C27 stainless steel, chosen for its corrosion resistance. Closed, the corkscrew measures 11.4 cm and weighs about 90 g. The handle comes in more than twenty materials, from wood to horn, from Stamina to stainless steel, up to silver and gold, in mirror or brushed finish. Maple is a blond wood, soft to the touch; stabilised, it is vacuum-impregnated with resin, which makes it immune to humidity and allows deep colours. The Classic is the founding model, the one from which the House's other sommelier corkscrews derive. It has a single bolster, the metal piece that caps the end of the handle, and weighs about 90 g. The Grand Cru keeps its features with wider bolsters (two bolsters, 100 g), for intensive use on the floor. The Edge is a Grand Cru underlined with blue, red or yellow tinted spacers. The Melchior keeps one bolster but widens the handle (95 g). The Versailles cuts its handle from historic woods of the gardens of the Château de Versailles and comes with a blue leather sheath. The World's Best Sommelier collection bears the names of the winners of the ASI competition. For anyone who wants the original silhouette, the slimmest of the range and, with the Versailles, the lightest (90 g), the Classic is the one. Château LAGUIOLE® was born in 1993 in Thiers, the French capital of cutlery, on the initiative of sommelier Guy Vialis, who wanted to turn a service tool into an object of art. After his death in 2016, the brand was taken over at the end of 2017 by LIGNE W, founded in 2008 by Sébastien Lézier, then brought in 2021 under the umbrella brand Maison Château LAGUIOLE®. The House is a partner of the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale (ASI) and of the Union de la Sommellerie Française (UDSF); its World's Best Sommelier collection bears the names of ASI competition winners, including Shinya Tasaki (1995) and Raimonds Tomsons (2023). Every sommelier corkscrew comes with a member card carrying a QR code: it attests that the piece comes from our workshops, and registering it online activates the lifetime warranty.