The government have been consulting on weights and measures; to their chagrin the vast majority of those consulted want to keep grams and metres but they have decided to allow wine to be sold in pints, a measure enjoyed by Churchill.
- Pint-sized bottles of wine to be sold after Brexit review from the BBC. They say, “However, it remains to be seen what the demand will be for pint-sized wine bottles among producers and bottlers.” This brings up the issue of economies of scale, the producers of champagne are unlikely to offer the new bottles as it is only the Brits that will be buying it.
- This was preceded by Wine, the pint bottle and European standards by Niall Ó Conghaile published by the East Anglia Times. Niall looks at the UK’s role in setting the 75ml standard, notes that the market of buyers and sellers is now global to the extent that even taste is being tuned to US and East Asian tastes. He concludes, “Yet many Brexiteers, and some in the Labour Party, seem to have difficulty in adjusting to the UK’s new place in the world. Why are they finding their new role vis-à-vis standard-setting and regulation so hard to understand?” abd “Once you accept that it’s inevitable that you will accept European standards, then the point becomes, why not get the full benefit of common standards by being inside a single market?” to which I say good question.
- To give some source material to Niall’s claim on bottle sizes, The Different Sizes of Wine Bottles from Spiral Cellars, which is amazing, I discover that a Rehoboam holds a gallon and a Melchizedek is the king of all wine bottles, holding a fantastic 30 litres (40 bottles).
Both pictures are from Unsplash