159

Finally, Frank Schoonmaker's

Encyclopedia of Wine

includes this summary of the cork

injector under "Corkscrew":

In recent years, an entirely new type of cork

extractor has come on the market, of which the

essential elements are a hollow needle and a

cartridge of compressed air or CO2 or freon gas,

which is injected into the space between the lower

end of the cork and the wine itself, so that the cork

is actually pushed, rather than pulled out of the

bottle. This ingenious idea offers many advantages,

and such devices, when perfected, may well replace

the corkscrews commonly used. They are

particularly effective when one is dealing with an

old, friable cork, likely to crumble or break; the air

or gas injected has no effect whatsoever on the

wine. Unfortunately, in most cases, the needles of

these instruments are too short to transpierce the

long corks used in the finest wines.

That was a glowing review in 1964 from one of the world's great wine experts, Frank

Schoonmaker. His last sentence likely refers to the early Corkmasters and/or eject-a-

corks. With this problem resolved in the mid-1960s, one would have expected that the

chances for overtaking corkscrew sales would have been heightened considerably.

Instead, with stories of danger spread, this "ingenious idea" never really got a healthy,

deserved foothold on the cork removal product market.