A traditional twist on holiday cheer

Issue Date: December 20, 2006

By Christine Souza
Assistant Editor

 

Like carving the holiday turkey, the task of opening and serving wine to family and friends has become a more prestigious job. Some wine lovers derive just as much pleasure from opening a bottle of wine as they do drinking it.

For corkscrew enthusiasts like Dean Walters, a collector and dealer from Marin County, they live for the expedition--to search for that unique and valuable bottle-opening instrument to add to their collection.

"People sometimes become fascinated because they get very involved with wine and wine collecting and then branch into the tools and devices associated with it," said Walters, co-founder of the Golden Gate Corkscrew Collectors. "Thousands of different corkscrews have been created, patented and designed, so a lot of people like the artisan craft beauty and mechanical devices."

Collectors and non-collectors alike can view one of the finest corkscrew collections in the nation at the former Greystone Cellars of the Christian Brothers winery in Napa. The facility is now home to the Culinary Institute of America, a premier cooking school, but offers the public an opportunity to see the storied collection of the late and legendary Brother Timothy, a cellar master for Christian Brothers for five decades.

"Brother Timothy collected corkscrews from people from all over the world who were either friends of his, part of the Christian Brothers order or people who visited Greystone," said Cate Conniff, CIA communications manager. "His corkscrew collection is certainly considered among the top collections in the country."

The collection was started in 1949, the year before the Christian Brothers purchased the Greystone property. By the time of Brother Timothy's death the day after his 94th birthday in 2004, the number of corkscrews had increased to well over 1,000.

"My initial motivation, before we started Greystone, was to study them and find out about the function of corkscrews," Brother Timothy said in a 1993 interview. "Which were the ones that performed properly? Which were the bad ones? So I was concerned about the efficiency or function of corkscrews, at first."

As the cellar master for the order's expanding wine operations, Brother Timothy established Christian Brothers as one of the leading wineries in California. Walters, a friend of Brother Timothy's since the 1970s, remembers how much the man enjoyed collecting corkscrews.

"Of the many things that he liked, corkscrews were really one of the things that fascinated him and so he, for more than half of his life, was devoted to collecting them," Walters said. "He never spent much money on a corkscrew, but he was involved so early it didn't cost him that much. Today if you want to be a collector, corkscrews have sold for up to $40,000, so it can be an expensive hobby."

To honor Brother Timothy, the Lasallian Education Fund and the West Coast Educational Foundation of the De La Salle Christian Brothers have released Brother Timothy Mont La Salle Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. For information about the wine, go to lasallianeducation.org.

Visitors can view the Brother Timothy corkscrew collection at the Culinary Institute of America daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

(Christine Souza is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at csouza@cfbf.com.)

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item. Top