One twist corkscrew America’s Test Kitchen recommends lists its materials as “Polycarbonate, stainless-steel worm coated in PTFE.” The handle and base are plastic. The worm, the steel spiral that goes into the cork, wears a nonstick coating.
Why the worm is coated
The testers opened 20 bottles with each model, 10 with natural corks and 10 with synthetic ones, and they found the continuous-turn twist models, the kind that pull the cork with the same motion that drives the worm in, practically foolproof. The winged models’ levers took less effort and made the job a hair faster, but the continuous-turn models usually performed better. Testers also liked their slimmer profiles and lighter weight: all but one were under 2.5 ounces, which made them easier to hold on a bottle’s neck.
Cork grips. A bare steel spiral has to cut through it against friction, and the coating helps: America’s Test Kitchen says a coated worm gives “a smoother entry into the cork, easier twisting, and less damage to the cork.” Its testers preferred coated worms to plain uncoated steel, in twist models and waiter’s corkscrews both, and they said the uncoated twist model they tried, which has a thicker worm, sometimes cracked the cork more. They still named it “Also Great.”
Herbert Allen’s 1981 Teflon-coated Screwpull, per National Geographic, was stylish enough to land in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
If you want no plastic, that coating is the problem. PTFE is a fluoropolymer, and it sits on the one part of the tool that scrapes against cork every time you open a bottle. We don’t know how much of it ends up in a cork or a glass, and we found no one who has measured a corkscrew worm.
Where the worm came from
The shape comes from the gun worm, a metal claw soldiers mounted on a ramrod to clear a jammed musket barrel. Its curled tip inspired the corkscrew’s spiral, which was once called a steel worm.
The first written reference National Geographic finds is a 1681 museum catalog that compares one rarity to “a Steel Worme used for the drawing of Corks out of Bottles,” which suggests the tool was already common. The first official corkscrew patent, filed in 1795 by the English Reverend Samuel Henshall, added a flat metal button above the helix to make a firmer fit with the cork. Hundreds of patents followed, and the same article counts Karl Wienke’s waiter’s friend, H.S. Heely’s winged double lever and the 1981 Screwpull among the key ones.
One length of steel
The FRAMA Ground Corkscrew goes the other way. The maker says it is “formed from a single length of stainless steel,” pressed and twisted, with a brushed matte finish and, in the maker’s materials line, “Finish: None.” There’s no grip sleeve, no cap, no joint and no applied coating. It measures 11.5 by 11.5 by 1.5 cm. The designer is Michael Antrobus, and the maker dates the design to 2010.
You drive it in with pressure on the twisted section of the handle, then grip the flat underside to pull. The index lists it at Silver. We found no plastic on the corkscrew itself. The tier stops short of Gold for one reason: FRAMA doesn’t say what the packaging is, and a buyer who wants none deserves to know that.
What you give up
We haven’t tested this corkscrew, so we can’t tell you how it treats an old, dry cork. What the published testing says is that coated worms were smoother going in, and that’s the exchange you’re making. If you open mostly young bottles, you may never notice. A crumbly old cork is where the missing coating is likely to show.
There’s no lever and no wings, only the twist and your grip. FRAMA calls it “a tactile, sculptural addition to the home bar.”
Price and wait
FRAMA lists it at 490 Danish kroner. On 2026-11-11, the day we checked, the page showed it as a preorder with 8 to 10 weeks to delivery. It’s made in China, per the maker. That’s a long wait for a corkscrew, so check the page for the current lead time before you plan around it.