The first line of marketing twaddle for the Peugeot Electric Wine Opener had me at Wikipedia in seconds, playing up a hunch:
Leave it to the French to devise an elegant, ultrafast method for opening a single bottle of wine – or an entire case.
In fact, the first corkscrew patent was awarded to Reverend Samuel Henshall in 1795… an Englishman. The English were also the first to start using corks to seal their wine bottles. So… no. That said, my fascination with corkscrew technology has me intrigued by this more technologically advanced model. You just pop it over the cork, push a button and it does the drilling and plunging for you. It even comes with a charging station.
That’s pretty neat, but the corkscrew is such a perfectly designed tool that an electric version seems swank but superfluous. Maybe I’m just thrifty, but it’s hard to justify $120.00 just to save yourself a decimal point of caloric expenditure. After all, even the rustiest Swiss Army Knife will do the job in a couple of seconds, with the occasional aid of some clenched eye teeth.
Peugeot Electric Wine Opener [Williams Sonoma]
Maybe they’re targeting women that always ask the man of the house to open the wine? Even then there’s something about the ritual of opening a bottle of wine that this gadget sterilizes.
The real market for this is probably restaurants, where time is money and a lot of grunting and yanking is undesirable. Here we’ll continue to just lop of the neck of the bottle with a machete.
It’s for people with arthritis or carpal tunnel issues–no reason why they shouldn’t enjoy their wine.
Women need men to open screw top jars, not bottles of wine.
I’ve always wondered why these things exist too, as I just use a $2 manual corkscrew myself.
Well, the manual can opener is a damn well designed tool as well, and I imagine the first electric one was pretty expensive too.
My grandma wouldn’t make it throughout the day without her electric can opener, her electric jar opener, and me (to find where they’re at so she can open something).
When it gets cheaper she’ll probably have one to open her awful Manischewitz.
I hereby swear to point my index finger accusingly at anyone I come across who owns or even uses one of these things whilst crying out “Sissy!” for all to hear.
They sell almost the exact same thing at Target for $20
http://www.target.com/Emerson-Electric-Wine-Bottle-Opener/dp/B000SAJGXO/qid=1212603102/ref=br_1_5/601-6996727-4590550?ie=UTF8&node=15358121&frombrowse=1&rh=&page=1
Not sure what the difference is between this and the one my wife received as a present for Christmas, other than the fact that hers was sold at Target and cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.
(including the day she opened the gift she’s used it once)
This is very much like a unit I bought a year ago at COSTCO for about $20. Its made by Oster and works very well with the advantage of easily opening the artificial corks properly.
Wyne openers, pepper mills. I reckon they’ll only stop when every single item in our kitchen is battery powered.
The sad part is the target market is not the small number of disabled people who would actually benefit from such a thing.
DeWalt should come out with a line of pepper mills, garlic mincers, wine openers, and other kitchen gadgets powered entirely from their powertools. (A la Alton Brown.) I’d buy a set in a heartbeat.
Yeah I don’t see this as terribly useful for the average person, though to be honest for those of us who are big into serious entertaining (parties at which 20-50 bottles of wine are dispatched), this actually seems like it would be nice. I hope it’s better than the Oster version, however, that thing didn’t fit half the bottles I tried it on, and the motor seemed pathetically weak.
At 60 bottles/charge (probably realistically 30), this could make it a lot faster to deploy the troops, if you know what I mean.
Like others said, devices like this are great for people with arthritis. My grandfather was a wine collector and wouldn’t have been able to enjoy wine without his electric corkscrew.
That said, I remember him having one back in the early 90′s, so this isn’t really news, but more another opportunity for you to misunderstand a product and make snarky comments.
When did BBG turn into the Sharper Image?
DeWalt should come out with a line of pepper mills, garlic mincers, wine openers, and other kitchen gadgets powered entirely from their powertools.
There are quite a number of, um, personal service attachments for your power drill and Sawzall. These particular applications really highlight the need for variable speed.
Firstly, may I say that I swear I’ve read that first line of marketing twaddle somewhere before, quite some time ago. No points for freshness awarded to BBG there.
Secondly, a rant about the disappointing video on the linked page. In a full two and a half minutes the bottle opening action was performed only once – and so frustratingly slowly too.
When BBG links to pages with videos of gadgets in action, I want to see instant, lascivious, fast, repeated gadget use. I want to see how fast the gadget works. When I’m tantalised by text like “… or an entire case”, I want to see a whole damn case opened as quickly as possible, not somebody talking and talking and talking about the damn thing as if she’s going to be led to an electric chair as soon as the video is done.