Winemakers question plan as government champions Brexit ‘freedom’ to allow old-fashioned size

The poet Robert Burns imagined a man toasting his lover with a “pint o’ wine”, and Winston Churchill was perhaps the most famous proponent of the pint bottle for champagne. Now, Rishi Sunak’s government has spied a “Brexit opportunity” to legalise the sale of wine by the pint once more – if it can persuade anyone to make the bottles.

Still and sparkling wine will be sold in 200ml, 500ml and 568ml (pint) sizes in 2024, alongside existing measures, under new rules, the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) announced on Wednesday. It said the change was made possible by Brexit.

However, the pint-sized move appeared to be the extent of a push towards imperial measures, after a government consultation into allowing more businesses to buy and sell using them resulted in no new action.

  • anothermemberEnglish
    32·
    6 months ago

    And therein lies the issue, how clear is clear?

    For example, if someone managed to get hold of bottles with slightly thicker glass, you could sell a bottle of wine with slightly less wine in than is obvious from the outside, increasing the price per mililitre by a few percent. Not much individually, but it all adds up over the year.

    If you’re buying that wine, and looking at a shelf of near identical looking shapes and sizes of bottle, you’re already factoring in grape, flavour, price per 750ml, provinence, alcohol content, etc, so what benefit do you get from one bottle being 750ml, and another being 736ml?

    Standardisation simplifies manufacturing (of bottles) as well as purchasing of the end product by consumers. There is no benefit to an overly wide selection of sizes.

    That sounds like a case for restricting the thickness of glass bottles rather than restricting the volume of liquid. How would switching to pints make any difference with that? As long as they’re labelled correctly I don’t see much problem.