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.

  • @nousEnglish
    7•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.

    You put the volume on the label, like you already required to do along side the ABV and other markings. That tells you how much liquid is inside - not trying to judge the size of a bottle by how thick the walls are.

    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.

    This makes no difference to manufacturing really. If it did then all bottles would be the same shape. We can have different shaped bottles for everything already so varying the size makes no practice difference here.

    These arguments for standard volumes of bottles are very weak. There might not be any big benefit to different sizes, but there is also not a huge disadvantage either. At best it is mildly simpler to compare things of the same size rather than just at a price per 100ml (regardless of the actual volume). Though you should still have a price per 100ml so you can compare the cost of things at different sizes groups (even for the same product).

    A far better argument against this is that it is a pointless stupid waste of time that no one asked for and no one under the age of 50 was even alive to remember wine being sold by the pint. There are far more important things the government can be spending their tax payers money on fighting for.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•6 months ago

      Just over 50. Can remember it being by the pint(actually fl oz) just. So your age guess is perfect.

      But yeah standadization of measurement unit is good. But absolutly no benifit to imperial. Less so now the US trade deal aint gonna happen. But technically even the US is metric legally. All there units are standadised via metric units. And their imperial is diffeeent to english units. As was the whole of europe. That why they changed.

      Moving back only makes trade harder world wide.

      As for standardised bottles. Even if it was a benifit. It should be a company choice not a law. If all useing the same bottles saves money. Absolutly no reason to use the law to force them to do so.

      I am legally blind. So really would be obe of the few people who would benifit from this.

      And my view is better lableing. Heck id even support requiring QR codes with info like this and nutritional content. Before bottlesize standardisation.

      Actially that would be a huge benifit all told. Being able to use my phone to speak all the details of the product. Including use by dates would be a fantastic advantage to all shoppers.

      And also allow multinational supply way cheaper then current system. Still way less restrictive then set size sale. Yet id still question if it should be a law.