I have bought a lot of corkscrews in my life. It’s one of those requisite tools you never seem to have with you when you need it. So off you go to get another, throw it in a drawer, glovebox, toolbox, etc. planning for a future critical moment when you will need it again only to discover that when that time comes, you can’t find it.
Or, you might be a wine technology geek and always ready to pay a premium for that next great revolution in cork removal, something with an app running on your smart phone, that magically allows the bottle to self-open with no labor whatsoever when the wine is at exactly the right temperature and humidity to be consumed with maximum enjoyment. It probably even posts its accomplishment to multiple social media cites and asks Siri or Alexa to order another bottle for drone delivery to your home.
Or you have friends you are struggling to buy just the right birthday gift for and, when combing the web, there it is: a personalized, bifurcated, solar powered, pneumatic cork remover.
I even sat through an excellent course on Six Sigma design methods sessions where the corkscrew was the class laboratory rat. The black belt brought in a whole box full of progressively more capable corkscrews to show how the design evolved to an apex device – the ultimate corkscrew in his expert analysis.
The thing about it is that few people actually pause to ask why a bottle needs a cork in the first place. Some innovative wine makers faced with a lack of supply of cork moved to plastic ones. But an even more innovative group went further and eliminated the cork altogether, replacing it with a twist cap – obsoleting centuries of corkscrew advances and giving cork forests a new lease on life.
Another Six Sigma black belt training focused on the evolution of mouse traps. I think I deflated the presentation by pointing out that making a better mouse trap is no longer important if you don’t have mice.
