Well, I am embarrassed to say that I am fascinated with them. The laguioles.
I bought a set of steak knives in Beaune that were indeed expensive. They
were surgical quality. We bought 2 boxes of 6 ea.

Then I bought several wine openers.

Lets face the truth. I did not need them. I did it for the same reason men
do everything. When I bought the steak knives for an anniversary 5 years
ago my wife gave me that special thank you.:-)

I kept buying more and more cork openers looking for the same effect. What
I did not connect was it was the wine she was drinking that really put her
in the mood.

Since this is a non commercial group I will not put my not needed laguiole 5
that I own plus a picnic knife up for sale. I do enjoy them and they really
do perform better than any waiters tool I have ever used.

Like Rabbi Chris Rock said "If men can screw in a trailer they wouldn't
bother to buy a house."

Enjoy

Pretentious Dick

"Bill Spohn" > wrote in message
...
> >but really fell more
> >"à l'aise" with the geometry of my Lagiole, the upstroke being
> >slightly longer than with the two-step waiters friend,
>
> I agree that using a well made implement has an innate reward, and you
have a
> point - geometry will vary and there is no reason, I suppose, that a
single
> stroke screw couldn't be adequate for almost all corks.
>
> I guess the ideal might be a two-step Laguiole, but I don't believe
they've
> offered that yet.
>
> The whole Laguiole thing puts me in mind of pens. Some people like owning
a
> particular sort of pen for the presumed prestige it offers - yuppie toys.
Other
> people may value the same thing more from the functional point of view.
>
> I own and use a couple of beautifully made Mont Blanc fountain pens (you
have
> to do something with all those gold card points and a man only needs so
many
> toasters), and I enjoy writing with them - I've been using fountain pens
since
> high school. I see people with Mont Blanc ball points, and I can't help
> thinking that they could only want what is in essence a fancy cover for a
> generic ballpoint refill for yuppie bragging reasons, as there is little
> functional reason to prefer such a pen.
>
> The Laguile corkscrews are an intermediate case. The workmanship is
admirable
> and they are worth some appreciation as objets d'art, but they also
function
> (old crumbly corks aside for the moment) exceedingly well.
>
> It makes me a bit nervous however when I see the yuppie wine fans pulling
their
> high end Laguioles from their custom leather cases in which they carry
them
> everywhere, never wanting to miss an opportunity to impress each other.
>
> I suppose that I should not allow the fact that some people do that to
> influence me or tempt me to class them in with other useless yuppie flash,
as
> they are really much more like a Mont Blanc fountain pen than a Mont Blanc
> ballpoint......