Wine Bottle Openers & Corkscrews - A Little History
Wine bottle tree
Wine has existed for millennia, but not the corkscrew. In early days, wine was kept in earthenware vessels or in wooden barrels.
It absolutely was just a couple century ago that wine turned saved in corked bottles. However, even before that, other substances were stored in a bottle using a cork, and thus required an implement to drag the cork out.
Bottle tree
So, where did the first corkscrew come from, and who was simply its inventor? Well, unfortunately we cannot genuinely have a definite answer to that, but this is what Ron McLean, a corkscrew historian-who knew there was clearly such a thing!-with the Virtual Corkscrew Museum says,
"It is unknown when and who made the very first corkscrew. The first corkscrews were based on a gun worme, a tool having a single or double spiral end fitting used to clean musket barrels or extract an unspent charge from the barrel. By the early 17th century corkscrews for removing corks were created by blacksmiths as employing a cork to stopper a bottle was more successful."
McLean's research also lists five patents, filed in England, France, Untied States, Germany and Canada, in that order, from 1795 to 1883.
It's interesting to remember how the kind of manual corkscrews hasn't really changed much since those start. Once the lever style corkscrew became popular in the recent past, many thought, "ooh, how much of an original idea." Many thought wrong. The lever, or winged style bottle of wine opener, has actually been around since the late eighteen hundreds and the newer designs are based on that.
Needless to say, today within the twenty first century, we love to our gadgets and gismos. Should there be a way to automate a regular task, all of us are for this. And so the electric wine opener has become a common thing. Oh, you likely won't see the sommelier your favorite restaurant one to start that fine cabernet or merlot you ordered, but many children use them and love them for that simplicity of extracting a cork from the bottle. For those who find having an old style corkscrew next to impossible, or are only tired of picking crumbled cork from their wine, buying an electric model may be the right choice.
Of course, if those YouTube videos you stumble across are to be believed, you may also use a phone directory or the trunk of a tree to start a bottle of wine if you've lost your corkscrew somewhere!
So, however today's corkscrew had become available, you will find there's number of variations to choose from. From the very easy screw on the handle to far more sophisticated models.