It can be quite difficult for people with limited hand strength to open a bottle of wine (I’m talking here about the conventional cork-stoppered bottles, rather than wine boxes or twist-off tops, although these can present their own difficulties).
Part of the reason that it’s hard to extract a cork, even when using one of the many levers-braced-against-the-bottleneck type devices, is that you are pulling the cork out against a partial vacuum created behind it.
Today’s invention is a standard helical corkscrew but with the modification that it is formed from a tube, rather than a rod. The end of the tube would be a closed needle-like shape, as usual, but downstream from the sharp end there would be a few small holes made from outside into the tube interior. Once the sharp screw end has penetrated the cork, there is therefore no difference in pressure between bottle interior and the atmosphere, making cork withdrawal much easier (These breathing holes would need to be angled so that bits of cork could not get through them).
Purists will, once again, choke on their Jefferson Lafite at the very idea of passing the corkscrew all the way through a cork -but they will all have wine butlers to do the business for them.
