1907
the beginning
Times were hard for the Rosati family at the turn of the 20thCentury. The brothers in the family were all engineers in the town of Montecatini just west of Florence in the heart of Tuscany. However, the economy was going through hard times, and work was challenging to come by.
In 1907 the family was scraping a living, so brother Domenico decided the time was right to venture across the ocean and emigrate with his family to find work in the United States. As one of the millions of Italians who took the gamble of a better life in America, Domenico Rosati eventually arrived in Chicago, Illinois and began hunting for a job.
As a native of Tuscany, knowledge of Italian wine was in his blood, so it didn’t take him long to find work as a bartender in a saloon.
1920s
the early years
With his wife Assunta and daughter Helena settled in the United States, Domenico decided to change his name to Dominik to fit better into his new life and country. Two years after arriving in Chicago, younger brother Arturo arrived in the city to start work with his brother as a bartender. The two Rosati brothers make a name for themselves in the bars and clubs of Chicago. Their knowledge drinks and particularly Italian wine makes them highly sought after by the city’s bar owners. As the years go by, they gain invaluable experience working behind the bar at many of the most fashionable establishments in Chicago.
Despite the introduction of prohibition, the two brothers can still find work tending bar in the speakeasies that spring up all around the city. But being a bartender in 1920s America is a precarious occupation. Often bar workers would find themselves caught between the mobsters running the speakeasies, and the police trying to close them down. It’s while working in the Chicago speakeasies that Dominik had his ‘light bulb moment’ when an idea came into his head that could make his job more comfortable and safer. Uncorking a bottle of wine using a conventional corkscrew had a hidden danger in the underworld of illegal drinking establishments. The sound of a loud pop inevitably came with pulling a cork, and the noise could give the location of an underground drinking club away to the authorities.
Dominik decided to use his engineering background to come up with a cork extraction device that would be easy to use and pull a cork smoothly and slowly, so it didn’t have the giveaway pop.
1930
the idea
After years of experimentation, Dominik had a design he was happy with and in 1928 filed a patent with the US Patent Office in Chicago. There then came two years of anxious waiting until his original design was granted an official patent on April 1, 1930. As the holder of patent he legally held the intellectual property to a cork extractor with two arms that uses leverage to draw the cork vertically from the bottle. From then on the brothers had a potential steady source of income that would not be linked to the vagaries of the bar business in prohibition Chicago.
2016
nowadays
And so to the present day, and as the grand-nephew of Dominik Rosati, it’s my dream to rekindle his entrepreneurial spirit and give his cork extractor a new lease of life. Did the two brothers ever meet Al Capone or any of the other famous Chicago gangsters?
I can’t say for sure, but what I do know is that from those days of great turmoil my ancestors created a tool that has become ubiquitous among wine lovers around the world. With my engineering experience, I intend to build on that success by redefining the patented Rosati cork extractor for the 21stCentury. With eight patents to my name, I feel confident the generations that have gone before me will be proud of the advances I am making to their original product. The new model is a handmade cork extractor using the best modern materials to improve reliability and durability, so wine lovers can continue enjoying the ritual of opening a bottle of their favourite vintage.