A great screw: the Monopol Fino.
Those of us who drink wine usually have a favourite corkscrew tucked away in an easy-to-reach door. Trusty bit of kit. Never goes wrong. Just place it like this, turn it like that and, hmm, erm, grunt, argh - oh, my poor back!
My personal favourite is a Monopol Fino double-lever corkscrew I've owned for so long that I can't remember for the life of me where it came from. Geographically speaking, it comes from Marburg in Germany, from the Monopol factory that set up business here sometime after the Second World War. The factory was originally founded in 1879 in Steinbeck-Hallenberg, Thuringia, in what was the German Democratic Republic between 1945 and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
There are very many different types of corkscrews, more or less successful, some gimmicks, others, like the Fino, fine bits of fool-proof, German engineering. Made from high quality stainless steel, this superb device has a zero failure rate and has yet to cause a sprained wrist, much less a hernia or slipped disc.
Curiously, although such near-perfect corkscrews have been available for decades, this hasn't stopped manufacturers from trying to improve them, or, I suppose, to cash in on our relentless quest for novelty. One of the most exciting corkscrews I ever watched in action - as a small boy - was the now incredibly rare Monopol Rocket. A 1960s design, it was small, blue aluminium and gas-propelled, a kind of miniature Werner von Braun V2 that you inserted into the cork of a wine bottle, pressed the nose-cone (I'm not making this up), and then - stand back, everyone - this pocket rocket shot up above the dinner table, frightening the dogs, and carrying the cork into domestic orbit.
This makes my old Monpol Fino sound a bit prosaic and antiquated, but where the Monopol Rocket required a supply of gas cartridges unlikely to be stocked by your local Britischer newsagent, the Fino could carry on regardless, or until your wine cellar ran dry.
There was also a Philip's electric corkscrew in the late 1980s, but that's another story from a different, and questionable, vintage.
